Chapter 17
Taking advantage of the civil war which convulsed France, these internal calamities offering a tempting opportunity for aggression, Henry V, on his accession, revived Edward III’s claim to the throne of France. Henry’s war was a renewal of the earlier struggle on the expiration of a truce made by Richard. In mid-1415, Henry sailed with his army from Southampton, and in five weeks had reduced the strong fortress of Harfleur. Dysentery and similar diseases made havoc in his ranks during the siege and it was with a mere handful of men that Henry decided to insult the enemy with a daring march, like that of Edward, upon Calais.
On the 8th of October the English marched off in three columns, with cavalry on their flanks. But Henry found the bridges of the river Somme broken down and the fords rendered perilous by lines of pointed stakes in the river bed. After some delay, an undefended place was discovered near St. Quentin; he crossed rapidly and marched for Calais, only for his weary, sick and half-starved force to find a much larger French force camped right across their line of march. The English King knew that he had no choice between fighting and unconditional surrender; his troops were starving and the way to Calais lay through the French army. The King’s courage rose as his peril grew and, hungry, sick and weary as they were, the handful of men whom he led shared the spirit of their leader.
Amid the darkness of the October night and through the sheets of biting, cold rain, the English could see the whole landscape flickering with the French camp-fires. Over the half-mile of sodden, muddy ground that lay between the armies, the passing wind carried the noise of shouting, singing and bursts of merriment. It contrasted oddly with the disciplined quiet of the English camp, where well-trained soldiers saw to their weapons, confessed and were shriven, chastened by the conviction that most of them would die on the morrow. King Henry took Utile rest; he moved quietly among his men, talking to them. Once, when a brief season of moonlight occurred, he sent officers out to examine the ground over which they would soon fight.
At three o’clock the moon rose, and the whole army awoke and prepared for the day’s work. To keep their hearts cheerful, the King ordered the trumpets, drums and fifes to play familiar tunes. The night passed away and the dawn stole on – the dawn of the Feast of St. Crispin, the 25th of October 1415. It had stopped raining but the sky was grey and water-laden; the men began to be deployed by their marshals into order of battle. If they did not present a tidy, colourful appearance, their tarnished, dented and well-used armour and equipment gave them a workmanlike status that held a hint of what was to come. It had been bright and burnished when they had left Southampton two months before; bright plumes in the apex of the helmet had long since bedraggled and drooped, but the form of the helm itself was still quite beautiful, with an orle or chaplet around it. The breastplates had become globular in recent years and the steel gorget was replacing the ancient camail which had hitherto protected the throat. Hanging sleeves of rich cloth had been worn with the armour, now hanging in threads and tatters. The lance-rests were hooks just below the right breast; two-handed swords with heavy blades had just been introduced and a pole-axe was often carried by commanders in the field. Monstrelet, in his Chronicles, describes the English archers as being for the most part without armour, and in jackets with their hose loose, without hats or caps and often barefooted; their hatchets or swords hung at their girdle. St. Remy says that they were not bareheaded, and that many of them wore caps of cuir bouilli, or boiled leather, and others of wicker-work crossed over with bars of iron.
The King heard three Masses, held at various parts of the camp so that all could take part; he was clad in all his armour save his helm and emblazoned surcoat. After the last Mass they brought them to him – the helm was a bascinet with a baviere, upon which he had a crown of gold studded with pearls, sapphires and rubies; his surcoat was resplendent with the leopards of England and the fleur-de-lys of France. He mounted his grey palfrey and rode down the lines of troops, calling out words of encouragement to them as he received their cheers. He spoke to his archers, reminding them that when Soissons had fallen a few months before, the French had hung up like dogs the 300 English archers of the garrison. The common soldier knew that, in defeat, he would be cut down to the last man; not for him was there a life-saving ransom as in the case of the knights.
As he proceeded, Henry chanced to hear someone wish that ‘… some of the good knights who were idle in England might, by a miracle, be transported to this field of battle.’
Henry cried loudly:
‘No! I would not have a single man more! If God gives us victory, it will be plain that we owe it to His goodness. If He do not, the fewer we are will be the less loss to England. But fight with your usual courage and God and the justice of our cause shall protect us!’
Another heartening example of spirit and courage was shown by David Gam, a Welsh captain, returning from reconnoitring the enemy, who reported that ‘… there are enough to be killed, enough to be taken and enough to run away!’
The small English army was drawn up on the old plan of Crécy, in the usual three ‘battles’ of dismounted men-at-arms with archers on the wings of each battle, and a further two bodies of archers, one on each wing of the army. The men-at-arms were about four deep and the archers about seven to the yard, being formed into wedges or bastion-like formations projecting in front of the line of men-at-arms. The centre was commanded by the King, the right wing by Edward, Duke of York, and Lord Camoys commanded the left wing. The total English strength was under 6,000, composed of about 1,000 men-at-arms and knights, with 5,000 archers – a force so small that the King could afford no reserve and only the smallest baggage-guard.
The French army, mainly composed of men-at-arms, was formed in three lines, all being dismounted except the rear one; there were two bodies of cavalry each 600 strong, stationed on each wing. The lines were about five or six deep, although the French front of about 1,200 yards was most congested for their force of about 25,000 men, so that they were densely packed with little space to ply weapons.
The two armies formed up at dawn on that autumn morning and, for four hours, stood motionless watching each other intently; the French had too many bitter memories of Crécy, Poitiers and other battles to take the offensive, so they stood firm awaiting an English advance. It was an anticlimax that was encouraging to the smaller English force, although very wearing on the nerves!
On the march to Agincourt, Henry had been informed that the French intended to make a ‘dead-set’ at the hated archers. To combat this, he ordered each archer to provide himself with a stake six feet in length and pointed at each end. In case of mounted attack, or when in position as on this very morning, the stakes were to be thrust into the ground, the upper ends sloping towards the enemy. The chronicler, Holinshed, writing on this, says: ‘The King ordered his battle thus: he caused stakes bound with iron sharpe at both ends of the length of five or six foot to be pitched before the archers and on each side of the footmen like a hedge, to the intent that if barded [i.e. armoured] horses run rashlie upon them they might shortlie be gored and destroyed. Certain persons were also appointed to remove the stakes as, by the movement of the archers, occasion and time should require, so that the footmen were hedged about with stakes. This device of fortyfieing the army was at this time first invented.’
During their long wait the men had the chance to view the arena; they saw that they filled one side of a rectangle, the other three sides being formed by the massed French army in front of them; by the Agincourt woods on their left and the Tramcourt woods on their right. The whole was about 940 yards wide at its narrowest point and the two armies were about 1,000 yards apart, with a slight dip between them so that they were in full view of each other. The ground beneath their feet was ploughed, a newly sown wheatfield made very soft and muddy by the tramping of feet after days of heavy rain. Some accounts of the battle claim that Henry had stationed a mounted force of about 400 lances in the Tram-court woods on the French left, and 200 archers on their right in the Agincourt woods – this seems unlikely in view of his sparse numbers.
Battle of Agincourt 25 th October 1415
Shrewd tactician Henry realised that his only possible chance of victory lay in provoking the much larger French army to attack him; so at eleven o’clock, he ordered his little army to advance to within long-archery range. The cry rang through the still air:
‘Advance, banner!’
Everyone knelt down, made a cross upon the ground and kissed it. Sir Thomas Erpingham, the commander of the archers, repeated the order and his lightly clad men struggled to pluck from the heavy ground the pointed wooden stakes that each had driven before him. Then the whole force slowly began to advance in line, halting occasionally to allow the heavily armoured men-at-arms to regain their breath. When ordered, the archers again planted their stakes in front of them, obliquely pointing towards the French likechevaux-de-frise; raising their bows, they opened fire in an attempt to sting the French into advancing. As they fired their first volley the archers raised a loud shout, partly of defiance and partly of sheer pleasure at the prospect of action. The standing about had caused them to chill and stiffen. Many of them had stripped to the waist for freedom of action, but many were naked from the waist down in order to cope with the dysentery from which most of them were suffering.
The French were unable to reply to the fire that quickly became a galling, damaging hail; they had brought with them a small body of crossbowmen but they had been pushed to the rear and could not get forward where they were needed. It was a position they were probably not sorry to be occupying, recalling the story of how the crossbowmen had been trampled down by their own knights at Crécy. At last the French cavalry on the wings began to move forward, the horses obviously stiff and weary from so long standing, the treacherous, muddy ground combined with the weight of their armoured riders causing them to stagger and stumble. At the same moment, the dismounted men-at-arms of the front line began to lurch forward, heavily, across the waterlogged ground, sinking to their ankles in the mud, all the time taking heavy punishment from the English arrows.
The mailed cavalry came nearer to the English lines, floundering through the wet, clayey soil and beset by hails of arrows that took greater toll as the range became shorter. So accurate was the aim of the English archers that most of the arrows struck the knights on their helmets and visors so that many fell shot through the brain; chroniclers report that so terrible was the rain of arrows that all had to bend their heads so as to save their faces. Other archers shot at the horses, killing some but wounding more, making them swerve, halt, plunge and cavort in all directions to cause confusion in the French ranks. So fierce was the fire coming towards them from front and flank that, on the Agincourt woods side, the cavalry led by Sir William de Savense pulled up and turned back, leaving Sir William and only two faithful followers to reach the English position. Here, because of the soft ground, some of the archers’ stakes became uprooted, but others caused the horses to fall so that the three riders were thrown heavily to the ground among the archers, to be instantly killed by sword and dagger.
The retreating cavalry, amongst whom were many riderless and unmanageable horses, caused great disorder among the advancing men-at-arms, whose plodding progress was further disorganised by their being crowded in on each other owing to the ‘funnelling’ of the woods as they came nearer to the English lines. This was further aggravated by the dismounted men, goaded by the showers of arrows, tending to flinch away from the wedges of bowmen towards the three divisions of men-at-arms; this caused further loss of space. Even so, the English line was shaken by the first impact of the heavily armoured formations and a wild, mingled mass of desperately fighting men of all arms filled the area. The archers, dropping their bows, seized their swords and axes and flung themselves into the places where gaps or breaches had been made by the French. The enemy men-at-arms, almost completely exhausted by their struggle through the mud and the subsequent fighting, were no match for their lighter opponents; almost helplessly they stood until beaten to the ground by repeated blows from the archers’ weapons. In a short time the French line was thrown back, reeling upon their second ‘battle’ as they, in their turn, heavily plodded up to join the action. It is not hard to imagine that the archers, a pretty rough lot at the best of times but now with their blood fired by the success of their shooting, were highly effective as they smashed at the struggling, weighted-down men-at-arms with swords, axes, clubs and mauls; or judiciously inserted a sharp dagger into a joint in the armour of a helpless, fallen man.
The English reformed their line and stepped forward to meet the new threat – led by the King, dismounted and fighting on foot, made conspicuous not only by his valour but by his glittering armour, emblazoned surcoat and gleaming crown on his helm. By now a wall of dead and dying had begun to form across the narrow gap between the two woods. It was a wall that was constantly added to by the casualties from the French second line; as it rose higher and higher it was scaled by the agile and lightly armed archers in their efforts to reach the enemy. Some of the frightful piles of dead men reached as high as a man, both sides fighting around them as though they were masonry ramparts. Henry drove back the Due d’Alençon, who had beaten the Duke of Gloucester to the ground with his battle-axe; in doing so he received a blow that clipped off a portion of the crown on his helm. D’Alençon and a number of other knights had sworn to kill the King – this they tried desperately to do and the fighting around Henry was deadly and without quarter; finally the dedicated French knights were all killed or lay wounded and helpless.
On all sides the French were being rapidly despatched and the battle was gradually petering out as fewer and fewer Frenchmen remained alive. For them it had been a nightmare. Pressing forward determinedly into the fight, they found it impossible to obtain sufficient room to wield their weapons; a man would be brought crashing to the muddy ground, taking with him those on either side of him, for all to wallow helplessly until despatched by the long, keen daggers of the archers. Defensive armour had become so heavy that there was no getting up once a man was down; in fact, the weighty men falling upon each other frequently caused death by suffocation. This happened to the Duke of York at Agincourt; when his body was found and pulled from the shambles he was unwounded but dead.
Still fresh and in good order and so far uncommitted, the French third line might well have restored the failing fortunes of the day. But they stood, in indecision and dismay, realising that to advance was fruitless and not knowing what else to do, whilst on all sides the faint-hearted slipped away in the confusion. Whilst they stood irresolute, a herald arrived from Henry with a message that they were to leave the field instantly, or receive no quarter; soon they began to melt away.
The two hours that followed were filled with the task of securing prisoners, disentangling the living from the dead, marshalling those who could walk and removing the armour of the wounded and the captives. In the midst of this industry, word flew from mouth to mouth that the enemy had got into the baggage-camp at Maisoncelles! This meant that the French were in the English rear, at present busy pillaging the camp after dispersing the small baggage-guard; at the same time, the French third line reappeared menacingly on the outskirts of the field! The Duke of Brabant had joined their leaders in entreating, threatening and urging them to return to the battle and had been partly successful in that the force had slowly, reluctantly, begun to edge back towards the English; they formed a force that, by itself, outnumbered the whole English army.
Absorbed in their work of collecting prisoners and booty, the English were taken completely off their guard. If they left the prisoners, many of whom were still in their armour, to go and repel the new threat, then the prisoners could pick up weapons and join with the plunderers to attack them in their rear. There seemed little alternative; reluctantly Henry ordered all prisoners to be put to the sword; after some mur-murings at good ransoms going to waste, the murderous work began and a wholesale massacre took place. When it was seen that the threat of attack had died away with the disappearance of the remaining French troops, the throat-cutting ceased. Froissart, speaking on the Battle of Aljubarrota, where as at Agincourt the handful of victors were obliged by a sudden panic to slay their prisoners, says: ‘Lo, behold the great evil adventure that fell that Saturday. For they slew as many good prisoners as would well have been worth, one with another, 400,000 franks.’
The main feature of the battle was the extraordinary numbers of French dead, reports indicating that the numbers reached 10,000. Included among the casualties were half the nobility of France – the Constable of France and Commander-in-Chief, Charles d’Albret, the Dukes of Alençon, Brabant and Bar, the Counts of Nevers, Vaudemont, Marie, Roussi and Falconberg. Among the prisoners were the Dukes of Orléans and Bourbon, Count Arthur of Richmont and Marshal Boucicaut – a clean sweep was made of the highest commanders of France. The English lost the Duke of York, the young Earl of Suffolk and about 1,500 men killed and wounded.
King Henry sent for Mountjoy, a French herald who came for permission to bury the dead. He said to him:
‘To whom belongs this victory?’
‘To you, sire.’
‘And what castle is that which we can perceive in the distance?’
‘It is called the castle of Agincourt, sire.’
‘Then let this be called the Battle of Agincourt,’ said Henry.