Dan Snow's History Hit - Agincourt: Myths Explained

Episode Date: May 4, 2022

Agincourt is a name which conjures an image of plucky English archers taking on and defeating the arrogant and aristocratic knights of the French court. But was it really the David and Goliath struggle often depicted on stage and screen? In this episode of the podcast, Dan is joined by Mike Loades to challenge some of the popular myths that surround the battle. Just how outnumbered were the English really? Could the French Knights really not get up if knocked over? And, was Henry V's campaign in France really a success despite the victory at Agincourt?If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Inn. A few months ago we had an episode on the Battle of Agincourt, proved very popular and we thought we'd revisit that iconic battle, talk about some of the myths associated with it, which we're doing so in this podcast. It looms so large, our historical, our cultural imaginations, especially or particularly maybe only if you live in England. And it's easy to see why it was on one level a very impressive victory but it has been so mythologized from the moment the fighting finished right up until the present day the mythology built up around it by Henry V himself and people like Shakespeare, Laurence Olivier and that work continues so in this episode I'm going to give

you a brief description of the course of the battle you can go back and listen to my Vagincore explainer if you want to get the in-depth, me getting a bit carried away, going a bit mad. But we'll go for a brief description of the battle itself, but we're going to unpack some of the biggest myths with the very, very brilliant Mike Lodes. He's a national treasure. He's an expert historian. He's been there, done that. He's shot the weapons. He's been bonked with the lances and the war hammers. He's struck with swords. He's the ultimate practitioner of living history. So he's going to talk me through some of the myths around the battle. If you wish to go and watch his documentaries about the Hundred Years' War, or about medieval warfare in general, or about anything in history, in fact, go to History Hit

TV. The link is in the description of this podcast. You just go and click on there, you get two weeks for free, and you join the world's best history channel. You get all these podcasts ad-free on there. You get hundreds of hours of history documentaries. You've got plenty to be getting on with. You're going to love it. But all of it costs less than the price of a pint of beer. It is a steal. So head over there after this podcast and do it. But in the meantime, here's me and Mike Lodes talking about Agincourt. Enjoy. The Battle of Agincourt was a clash that took place between the French and the English in 1415.

It took place during the so-called Hundred Years' War between England and France, which, hey, here's myth number one. Despite its name, it was not a continuous conflict. It was really several wars between England and France, which, hey, here's myth number one, despite its name, was not a continuous conflict. It was really several wars between England and France, which began in around 1337, ended in 1453 with the final battle. So it actually lasted around 116 years. Also, while we're on the subject, the Seven Years' War didn't last seven years. Thirty Years' War, though, that did actually last 30 years, curiously. Anyway, so you've got England and France fighting. Now it's tempting to think of England and France locked in a perpetual cycle of violence. Relationally the two crowns are quite strained because of course in 1066

William Duke of Normandy become King of England. So at the same time he was a vassal of the king of France as duke of Normandy but also his equal as brother king of England. Relations between the two probably weren't greatly helped by a series of intermarriages. You get a little family politics on top of that national competition and the fact that Henry II of England married the ex-wife of the King of France. You see what I'm talking about here? This little corner of Eurasia was bound to get tense from time to time. The Hundred Years' War, though, was precipitated probably when King Philip IV of France died in 1314. And three of his sons and one grandson became king one after the other, but all died in the next 14 years. That left the nearest male relative to the throne as the king of England, unfortunately,

Edward III. He was able to claim the throne through his mother, Isabella, who'd been the last king's sister. But the French were having none of that. They were not having Englishmen on the throne of France. And they came up with a very ancient piece of probably recently made up law that said you could not inherit through the female line. Edward III decided to go to war to press his claim and launched a series of raids which were carried on ably by his son the Black Prince. England then

became fairly self-absorbed there was a period of civil conflict which the second was kicked off the throne by his cousin Henry IV who faced various rebellions. Henry IV and his son Prince Henry were rather occupied. But when young Prince Henry came to the throne as Henry V, he was able to turn his attention

back onto France. Not simply because Englishmen always fought Frenchmen, because the very particular politics of Henry V's reign, his need to unite England, unite his disgruntled aristocratic factions. And the best place to do that would be on a foreign battlefield where together they could win glory and cash. Mike Lodes has got some interesting thoughts about it. Let's listen to him.

interesting thoughts about it. Let's listen to him. What he was there for was to take territory. He had this, in his eyes, claim to the French throne, and he got some money from Parliament because he thought, well, this is going to be great. If I get some of these French territories, then they'll pay taxes. So the English were very in favour of this robbery. Let's go and take some French land, and it'll ease our tax burden because they'll be paying tax. That was, well, it wasn't an English-French thing in the way that we think of it now. And everyone goes about the old rivalry and all of it. This was just greedy kings trying to grab some territory. And the people who went along with him went along for the adventure and to earn some money.

These were paid people, not patriots. Henry V landed in August 1415 in Normandy, the place where he was going to lay claim to his ancestral patrimony, the Duchy of Normandy. He brought with him, we think, around 12,000 men. This is important because myth number two is all about the numbers of people involved at Agincourt. It wasn't quite the David and Goliath victory that the English have made it out to be. Let's say 12,000 men arrived in Normandy. It's a big army. It's

actually a bigger army than any launched in the 13th century. The brilliant Professor Anne Currie has done astonishing work on working out just how many men Henry took with him. Around 25% of those men were, we might describe them as knights. They had a full set of armour. They were kind of men at arms. They were able to pay for a horse. And around 75% were archers. They were paid 6p a day, a lot less.

So you could have many more archers. A lot more bang for your buck. Or bow. You get a lot more bow for your buck. It took them six weeks to capture the town of Harfleur, which was not taken until the 22nd of September. Henry was in the trenches. He was very, very active, but one place he wasn't was in the breach. Harfleur was not stormed. Henry did not lead the English army in rampaging through the streets of Harfleur,

fighting house to house to secure the town. The citizens of Harfleur very sensibly surrendered before that became necessity. The last thing you want is a medieval army smashing through your town. Their blood is up. They've just fought their way through a terrible breach. They are bent on revenge. And that is when you get the horrific, horrific war crimes being committed. And so the citizens open up a negotiation. Once Henry's artillery opens a breach in the wall, they surrender. Some are happy to stay in the city with Henry as their new overlord. Some leave. Now, Henry has lost men during the siege, particularly from disease. He's also got to put around 1,200 men into the garrison at Harfleur. So Anne Currie

thinks he's down to around 8,000 men once he's put a sizable garrison into Harfleur and he's evacuated the sick, the wounded, back to England and he's buried his dead. The English, it's true, did have dysentery, so they're not in great shape. And they were then forced to march 260 miles in just two and a half weeks. Rather than get ships back to England, Henry wants a little bit more to show for his campaign. So he goes on a march across Norman territory, French territory, towards Calais, which is still a pinprick in English hands. Why did he do that? Well, it's unclear. Perhaps to emulate the great marches of his ancestor, Edward III, or perhaps to show that the Duke of Normandy was free to march across his

own territory to goad the French into fighting him, we don't know. But either way, if that's the case, it certainly worked. The French do block Henry's route to Calais with an army that was once said to be up to 60,000 strong, but we think now probably 15,000 strong. There were plenty of princes of blood there, plenty of dukes and royal dukes. Make no mistake, this was serious French effort, but they probably didn't outnumber the English by that much. When we talk about the numbers at Agincourt,

there are two things to keep in mind. A, the numbers of the English are slightly greater than we used to think because of the wonderful work by Dr. Anne Currie. We have so many records for Agincourt. And she has determined there were about 1,500 men-at-arms and about 7,000 archers. So that's an 8,500-man army on the English side. On the French side, the ones they didn't use don't really count. So the fact that they had 4,000 longbowmen and about 1,500 crossbowmen waiting in the rear that were never called forward because knights are going to sort it out, it doesn't really count. So they probably only fielded about 10,000. fielded about 10,000. So it isn't this, you know, band of brothers, we few, we happy few. It was relatively equal numbers. There's a disparity in the type of troops, but the numbers are similar.

But it's the size of the front that counts. It doesn't matter if you've got 10,000 men at arms against our 1,500. It's only the front row that can fight. And the ones at the back are stuck being shot at by archers from the flanks. You listen to Dan Snow's history. I'm talking Agincourt again with Mike Lodes. More coming up. with Mike Lodes. More coming up. History tells us that in 1455, the royal houses of Lancaster and York went to war, beginning a 30-year dynastic struggle for the throne that would change the course of English history forever.

It became known as the Wars of the Roses. At this time, the Wars of the Roses are well underway. There's so much uncertainty throughout the country and who's going to come through all of this. This month, we're dedicating a special series of episodes to finding out all the answers to your burning questions. People have just ashamed that both words were bad. But when was this scribbled in?

It's effectively an act of graffiti on a parliamentary roll. Who were the key players? What were the critical battles and switches of allegiance? Was it ever really a case of good and bad? Join me, Matt Lewis, on the Gone Medieval podcast from History Hit every Saturday for brand new episodes. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest

millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Of course, the fewer the troops on the winning side of a battlefield, the more the glory. And that's something that Henry advertised at the time, and it's something that Shakespeare, of course, was very keen to amplify. The famous speech that Shakespeare puts into the mouth of one of the greatest speeches in the English language the night before the battle is all about how few they are in number 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 and gentlemen in england now abed shall think themselves a curse they were not here and hold their manhoods cheap whilst any speaks that fought with us upon St Crispin's day. Henry making it clear there that he wouldn't have anyone lazing around in England. He was happy with the few, the committed few that he'd brought with him to that field of Agincourt. It is a great theme of all pre-battle speeches. I remember for a big game around the 16 rugby team,

basically tweaking that speech and giving it to everyone. They thought I was a flipping genius. Little did they know that I was a flipping genius. Little did they know that I was just doing my English GCSE. Anyway, let's talk about the next myth. The next myth is that actually it was archers that won the battle. The humble English and Welsh, let's not forget the Welsh, the English and Welsh archers, with their devastating longbows, the so-called machine gun of the Middle Ages, they were able to rain arrows down on the french which sent them into panic and disorder it is true that on the morning of Agincourt Henry took

matters into his own hands he up sticks literally he'd made his troops particularly his archers cut logs into long spiky obstacles that could be stuck into the soil like a fence post you whack it into the soil and angle you sharpen you whack it into the soil an angle you sharpen the ends it's a sharp and wooden stake and he'd put those in position like before what did the first thing in the morning is he lifted those up and advanced his entire army closer to the french bringing them into range and then put his stakes back into ground hammered them back into the ground that meant they'd stolen the march on the french that the french army as they were organizing for the attack was now within range under fire from the English archers. In this precipitate the battle now

under attack the French were forced to launch their offensive probably before they're ready. Henry was standing wearing a great golden crownless helmet the French fleur-de-lis on it a brutal taunt to his French enemy and the French were desperate to get at him. The archers were on the flanks, he was in the centre with his men at arms. The French attack, the plan had been a massive cavalry attack on those archers, on the flanks, take them out, get rid of them and then it would allow the main body of the French to march up and engage the English. The French cavalry hopefully could outflank them, they would be surrounded and destroyed. But it didn't quite go like that. The English were not as rich as the French. So, you know, medieval armies were

predominantly men-at-arms, knights, men in armour, out to seek honour, fortune, glory, and they were the fighting machines of medieval battles. But the English found out at the early part of the Hundred Years' War that they could field archers for much less money, and they could be extremely effective. So by the time Henry V took his force over, well, by the time they reached Agincourt, it was probably about 1,500 men at arms and 7,000 archers. So that proportion tells you a lot about the way they intended to fight. So the archers, OK, 7,000 archers. They were butchers and bakers and candlestick makers and smiths. And they'd sign up for, you know, 40 day service or whatever, up six months a day.

Also usually expecting to get a bit of loot. They could come back and start their own business instead of working for somebody else. I mean, this was an enterprise. But where Henry really gained was by putting his archers around the flanks. The whole thing was a taper and there was woodland here. And woodland's awful for cavalry. But it's great for hiding archers who can get out of the way. And he sent a lot of his archers down the flanks.

So by the time the French came in, they were even able to come around from behind. So the French absolutely caught in this pincer movement. So the archery was enormously effective. Certainly some people would have been killed with hits, but I do not believe the Laurence Olivier image of these ragged men stood behind these stakes, launching these volleys at distance. That's not how it was.

So that's the archers. Let's look at another myth of battle that Mike identifies. There's a sense that the French were hamstrung by a sort of vain commitment to the centrality of the knight, of pageantry, of rank. And it is true that the French army was a little unwieldy. The French Dauphin was an obese, useless youngster who would have been completely out of place on the battlefield.

The French king was terribly mentally ill. He believed he was made of glass. And so there were competing interests on the battlefield. There were jostling egos, and many of those egos paid for their pride in their own blood. The dukes of Alençon, Barre, and Brabant died. Nearly a dozen counts, viscounts, and many of the great office holders of France,

including its constable and its admiral, were killed too. Scuffles broke out for precedence. People wanted to be in the front line because they were more senior in the nobility than other people. So it wasn't great in the French line. But also this has been exaggerated by subsequent storytellers, as has the unwieldy nature of the kind of weapons and arms the French went into battle with. Now, Mike knows more than anyone in the world about this, so it's great to hear he's taken it.

But just let me briefly tell you what happened when, after the French cavalry had been broken up by the wooden stakes, the terrible muddy ground, the ground was totally unsuitable to mass cavalry attacks. Swamped in mud. The horses were slowed down, trapped by the mud. The English archers were able to rain down terrible steel-tipped arrows in a horrific hail of shot on top of that cavalry attack. And the French infantry were therefore forced to attack with the archers at their flanks shooting into them and the English line ahead determined to resist them. The fighting was tough, it was fierce, Henry was in the thick of it, his brother was wounded in the groin, Henry stood over his wounded prone form beating back all attackers until his brother could be dragged away and there was a terrible crush of battlers. The French came

forward, their front ranks were hacked down, following ranks tripped over them, exhausted, sweating, breathing heavily. More and more men pressed them from behind onto the spear tips and the sword blades of the English who stood unbroken in front of them. But let's see what Mike makes of that bit of the battle, and whether it was the French weakness, the commitment to chivalry in what they were wearing and the way they went into battle, it was their fatal flaw. It wasn't as silly as Shakespeare portrayed it. Any discussion of Agincourt has to keep coming back to Shakespeare and in modern times has to keep coming back to the Olivier film. Because this is where the national myth is born and perpetuated.

is where the national myth is born and perpetuated. The story goes that Olivier went to see Sir James Mann, who was the then master of the armories at the Tower of London, which is where they were then, to consult. And Mann had said, I do hope you're not going to have this silly notion of knights being winched on their saddle. And Olivier said, well, why not? It's so theatrical. It's so good. And it didn't happen. They could spring up from the ground, get on from the stirrup. Olivia apparently said, very well. I shall only have the French do it. And so we get that thing where, oh, the stupid French.

And oh, they're so vainglorious. Well, actually, they were some of the finest knights of the Middle Ages. Boussico in particular was in particular. They were enormously agile. They were athletes. They were supreme athletes. Fighting was their job. So the aristocracy at that period, that was their job, to be an elite soldier, a crack troop. And they would train in armour. So Boussico, for instance, the French commander, one of the French commanders, I mean, he was famed that he would go for a mile run in his armour every day. He could climb up the underside of a ladder wearing full armour just with his hands. but they did have command rivalries. They actually had a good plan.

You know, if you've got an army of 7,000 English archers, smashing them with cavalry is a pretty good idea. What went wrong at Agincourt was the mud. So that area of northern France has a particularly sort of loamy viscous sticky mud just to try and walk across a field in your wellies is hard enough work because it it all clags and clogs and then you're suddenly carrying divers boot weight on your feet and you can hardly move so the planished surfaces of armor really collected this mud. So if knights were struck down from their horses,

if their horses were shot beneath them, then they probably did find it difficult to get up because of the mud, but not because of the armour. It was just unfortunate that they picked the wrong terrain, and I don't know how that happened. And Henry V did outsmart by putting those archers round on the flanks and by getting those stakes cut. It's too easy to condemn the French leadership for mistakes. I think you do need to give Henry V some generalship credit for the way he marshaled that army. Huge thanks to Mike Lowe for coming on the podcast and sharing some of his amazing

insights about the Battle of Agincourt, a thing that he's thought more about than most people. So very, very grateful to him. I'll just wrap up now by talking about why this battle remains so huge in our popular imagination. Of course, it's the mythology, it's the writing, it's the Shakespeare play, it's the Laurence Olivier adaptation, the Kenneth Branagh adaptation more recently. Remember, in history, it's not what you do that will get remembered, it's who relays the information about what you've done. And like all great leaders, everyone who wants to be remembered, like Winston Churchill who said, history will be kind to me for I intend to write it, Henry V set about writing that history immediately. He sent lists of the dead and captured French, accounts of the battle around all the shires.

He had his representative in the shires read it out across England and Wales. He went home and a huge pageant was put on for him in London, perhaps disguising the fact or sort of gilding the fact that actually the English taxpayers spent a lot of money on this exhibition. All they had to show for it was one town captured in France and heroic victory in this battle. Henry wanted the English public, the English political elite, to believe that a lot more had been achieved than that. He made sure that giants were on hand to greet him when he came back to London, channelling of course David and Goliath. He entered London in simple clothing

like Jesus entering Jerusalem for the first time. It all worked of course, the battle was cemented in the English imagination, Parliament voted in more tax and he was able then to properly start his invasion and conquest of France a year or two later. And through the years that followed as memories of the Hundred Years' War faded, particularly memories of the latter stage of the Hundred Years' War when English armies were destroyed, beaten out of France, and nearly every English possession taken back by the French king. Agincourt assumed a life of its own. Shakespeare came along at the end of the 15th century and wrote Henry V, interestingly, just as the Earl of Essex was taking an army to campaign in Normandy. Agincourt is dragged back into the popular imagination during the First War of the Battle of Mons,

the defeat at Mons, it should be said. The German army pushed the British army back from Mons, the first big engagement of the British army in Belgium in 1914. And a journalist created a story that angelic English bowmen, the ghosts of Agincourt archers, appeared in the sky to assist the English. The people of Britain, her fighting men, were being told to channel the spirit of Agincourt very obviously in that moment. And in the Second World War, when Churchill was about to launch his invasion of Normandy D-Day in 1944, he encouraged Laurence Olivier to shoot the film Henry V to remind the British of previous glorious episodes in Normandy, there are plenty to choose from, and many end less happily than Agincourt. So Agincourt has been brought back time and again since it was fought.

Most recently, it's occasionally brought back in the mutterings of the Brexit MPs like Jacob Rees-Mogg, who ask a post-Brexit generation of Britons to rediscover the animating spirit of Agincourt. And perhaps it'll work. Perhaps Agincourt is more myth than battle. But it's been great, on this podcast and others, trying to get to the heart of what it all means. Thank you for listening. I feel we have the history upon our shoulders.

All this tradition of ours,'s history as i say all the time i love doing these podcasts they are the best thing i do professionally i feel very lucky to have you listening to them if you fancied giving them a rating review obviously the best rating review possible would be ideal it makes a big difference to us I know it's a pain but we'd really really be grateful and if you want to listen to the other podcasts in our ever increasing stable don't forget we've got Susanna Lipscomb with Not Just the Tudors that's flying high in the charts we've got our medieval podcast Medieval, with the brilliant Matt Lewis and Kat Jarman. We've got the ancients with our very own Tristan Hughes.

And we've got warfare as well, dealing with all things military. Please go and check those out wherever you get your pods.