The Battle of Agincourt, October 25, 1415
-Jason
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Today we are covering one of the Plantagenet Dynasty’s most stunning victories. The Battle of Agincourt was the climax to an otherwise uneventful English campaigning season in northwestern France and one of the bloodiest engagements of The Hundred Years War. King Henry V of England cemented his name and reputation as a military leader on this small, muddy battlefield. France suffered a crushing defeat that wiped out a generation of its landed nobility.
The Hundred Years War was a dynastic conflict between the English and French royal families over control of the crown of the Kingdom of France. King Henry V was shrewd in pushing his claims for the French crown between 1414 and 1415. Henry demanded that his claim to the Kingdom of France was valid due to the crushing victories won by his great-grandfather, King Edward III, at the Battles of Crecy and Poitiers. But he was willing to renounce his claim, if the French would recognize English control of the territories of Anjou, Aquitaine, Brittany, Flanders, Normandy, and Touraine, which compromised most of western and northern France. Countless, bitter wars were fought over who controlled these lands. He also proposed to marry Catherine, French King Charles VI’s youngest daughter, provided that she had a 2 million crown dowry.
The French responded with what they felt were generous counterproposals: Henry could marry Catherine, but with only a 600,000-crown dowry, and no recognition of any English territorial gains. These terms were unacceptable to Henry. He asked Great Council for and was granted a double “allowance” of taxes to raise an army for the invasion of France. On April 19, 1414, Henry was given authorization by the Great Council to launch his war.
It was not until August 13, 1415, that Henry’s army landed in northern France. The opening objective of the campaign was the capture of the port of Harfleur. Harfleur was one of the last Atlantic ports still in French control, which made it a vital target for Henry. Despite outnumbering the defenders of the city, the siege took much longer than Henry had expected. It was not until September 22 that the city elders surrendered. The delay would have major consequences on how Henry conducted the rest of the fall’s engagements.
The majority of Henry’s army did not leave Harfleur until October 8. Disease, particularly dysentery, had spread through the English camp, and was rampant among the soldiers: of the 12,000 men he started with, Henry only had 9,000 remaining by the beginning of October. These casualties and the approach of winter meant that Henry’s first campaigning season was effectively over. The English King had several options available to him: he could retreat to London by sea and launch a new invasion next spring, he could encamp at Harfleur and hope that his army would survive the outbreak, or he could march overland to reach the English-controlled city of Calais. Henry was unsatisfied with the capture of only one city; he decided that raiding the French countryside while marching to Calais would strengthen his chances of victory next spring.
The French were not idle during this time: they raised several armies, the largest of which was around the city of Rouen but was not ready to march before Harfleur fell. The French commanders decided to shadow Henry’s army, in hopes of blocking his route to Calais until further reinforcements could arrive. As the English started to march north, they were blocked at the River Somme. The French briefly forced Henry to march south to find a ford to cross the river. Once this was accomplished, the French closely followed the English but avoided battle. More soldiers were raised and raced to reinforce the local French army. This pursuit became a game of cat-and-mouse as the English could neither lose nor engage their enemy.
This situation continued until October 24, 1415, when Henry stopped his army’s retreat. Henry realized that if he continued to retreat, his army would disintegrate due to dysentery and never confront the main French army. The area where he decided to confront the French served as an excellent defensive position: a narrow field with heavy woods on either side. The English and French men-at-arms stood watching each other throughout the day waiting for orders to attack. He told his men to establish fieldworks, consisting of sharpened stakes, to protect their archers from French cavalry. The French were wary of fighting even this depleted English force and tried to stall for time via negotiations. That night, fate gave the English a major advantage for the coming battle: a heavy rainstorm saturated the fields and turned them into mud.
Henry split his army of 9,000 into three divisions: the center which he commanded, a left wing commanded by Edward, Duke of York, and finally the right wing commanded by Baron Thomas Camoys. His army consisted of mainly English and Welsh longbowmen and men-at-arms. The longbowmen had proven themselves as a decisive part of the English army earlier in The Hundred Years War when they decimated the French armies at Crecy and Poitiers. All the English soldiers were deployed on foot between the two woodlands on their flanks. Sharpened wooden stakes were driven into the ground in front of the English positions to prevent the French from conducting cavalry charges.
The French deployed their 20,000-man army into three divisions, or battles as they were termed at the time. The first battle was the vanguard of the army and consisted of most of the French nobles, who wanted to be the first to engage the English. The second battle, or main body, consisted of lesser nobles and men-at-arms, and the third battle was made up of every other French soldier. Two mounted units were kept on horseback with the intention of being used to break the English archers and to attack their camp from the rear. Several major tactical errors were made by the French: they had no overall battleplan, no way to communicate between divisions, all their archers and crossbowmen were stationed out of effective range, the cavalry and infantry were not able to support each other, and the muddy terrain would easily exhaust both men and horses. The French entered the Battle of Agincourt in disastrous fashion.
The first three hours after sunrise on October 25 saw no combat, as both armies awaited the other to advance. Henry, fearing the longer he delayed this battle the more French reinforcements would arrive, ordered his men to advance. They removed the wooden stakes and marched within effective range for their longbowmen. After quickly reestablishing their defenses and formations, the English archers began to bombard the French. The mounted French men-at-arms charged at the newly reformed English lines and became mired in the thick mud. The defensive stakes were replaced in front of their lines; the English soldiers were mostly unfazed by the heavy French cavalry: most of the mounted French warriors were cut down by hails of arrows and their riderless horses smashed into the French foot soldiers as they advanced.
The French vanguard battle was much slower to advance than their mounted kindred. The heavy armor combined with the mud quickly exhausted the infantry long before they reached the English lines. The entire route of the march was deluged with thousands of English arrows. Those in the vanguard who managed to reach their English counterparts were already fatigued and made no gains in hand-to-hand combat. The second French division followed closely on heels of the vanguard, preventing them from being able to maneuver. The English men-at-arms fought the French to a standstill and the longbowmen extended their lines so that they could fire pointblank into their flailing enemies. The third French division stayed where it was as its commanders had no idea if or when to attack.
The largest areas of bloodshed were concentrated around the three main English battle standards stationed along the frontline. Henry fought in the front rank with his men and ensured that the center held firm. The Duke of York and Baron Thomas were both killed in the fighting while leading their men. Henry received an axe blow to his helmet while protecting his injured brother. As the afternoon wore on, it was apparent that the smaller English force had held it own, but Henry feared the numbers of surviving French troops might still turn the tide. The enemy men-at-arms that had been captured by the English were considerable and a security threat to Henry’s army. He took the controversial step to order his men to execute any Frenchman who was not valuable enough to ransom. The English men-at-arms refused, finding the order dishonorable, and rather foolish in terms of lost income; the longbowmen were given the task.
As the fighting finally ended, Henry sent envoys to the surviving French to confirm his crushing victory. Around 6,000 French soldiers lay dead on the battlefield. It was said that flower of the local French nobility had been decimated during the battle because so many of the landed nobility had been wiped out. The English did keep between 700 and 1200 French nobles as prisoners to later ransom. Henry’s army came out of the Battle of Agincourt with relatively light casualties: accounts differ on the number of English dead, stating between 100 and 600 men killed. Henry finished his march to Calais and boarded a ship for England on November 16; he arrived in London on November 22 and was lauded as a hero. The sheer destruction caused to the French nobility and army ensured that Henry could continue his future campaigns to claim more Continental territory.