Dan Snow's History Hit - The Battle of Agincourt

Episode Date: April 30, 2023

The Battle of Agincourt looms large in the English historical and cultural imagination, this explainer wades through the mythology to help listeners really understand this infamous battle.From almost the moment the battle finished the myth of Agincourt was being spun. Henry V milked the victory for all its worth to secure his reign and it has continued to play a prominent role in the British psyche ever since inspiring both Shakespeare and Churchill amongst others. It was however a crushing English victory with much of the nobility of Northern France being killed on that muddy field that day. It is all the more remarkable as Henry's army had been worn down by previous battles and ravaged by dysentery with thousands dying in miserable agony. In this episode, Dan returns with another of his explainers to explore the background, the campaign, the battle itself and its aftermath. If you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can email us at [e-mail], we'd love to hear from you!If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hey everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. The Battle of Agincourt was one of the most famous and celebrated victories in English history. It was spun right from the start, from within minutes of the battle ending, as a sign of divine approval on Henry V and the House of Lancaster. Henry made sure that he marketed that battle on both sides of the channel for everything it was worth. You'll have heard Greg Jenner on a recent podcast saying he thinks it's the most overrated victory in British history. He may well be right. Either way, though, it's an extraordinary story. It was a great battle. It was a great clash between England and France. And it remains

an extraordinary story 600 years later. In this episode of Dan Snow's History Hit, by popular demand, asking folks what they'd like me to talk about, I'm doing the Battle of Agincourt. The background, the campaign, the battle itself and the consequences. It's the Battle of Agincourt, me doing one of my little monologues. Me doing that thing I promised I'd never do, just talking away. Shouting at a microphone in my own house. Isolated, alone, like Ebenezer Scrooge in his counting house

after the onset of dark on Christmas Eve. That's basically me. That's basically me sitting in my study yelling about Princes of the Blood being hacked down on a field south of Calais. But you know what? It makes me happy. And frankly, if you find something that makes you happy, you need to cling to it. But you know what? It makes me happy. And frankly, if you find something that makes you happy,

you need to cling to it. So thank you very much for listening to it. Here's everything you need to know about Henry V's victory at Agincourt over the French in late 1415. We few, we happy few.

T-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. The story of Agincourt stretches back, well, nearly 350 years before. When the Dukes of Norm When the dukes of Normandy,

William Duke of Normandy, became King of England, it triggered a bit of a problem in the internal politics of France. You have a subject of the King of France, now King of England. He is subordinate to the King of France as Duke of Normandy, sort of, but also is equal as King of England. Depends which hat he's wearing. Very, very tricky. And given that the internal politics of the space, which we now call France, was pretty complicated already, this was only adding fuel to a very combustible situation. The Dukes of Normandy were constantly campaigning against the neighbouring Counts and Dukes in Brittany and Maine or Rue and Flanders. Now they have the resources of England behind them, they obviously posed a greater threat to France than the kings of France would have liked. And from the late 13th century, it became kind of a central aim of French strategy, was to basically drive the English

out of Normandy, to dispossess the King of England of his Norman territories, incorporate them into France, and slightly rationalise their relationship. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. King John of England, Duke of Normandy, an incompetent, cowardly weakling. King John was driven out of Normandy by the French and then was on the verge of being toppled by his own magnates, helped by a French invasion in England, before he thankfully died of dysentery and that saved his dynasty. His son, Henry III, restored Plantagenet fortunes within England, with the help, obviously, of William the Marshal. Legend. But King Henry ruled over only a tiny little rump of his family's patrimony in France, the area of Gascony. And from Henry onwards, there was a desire among his

English successors to seize back their land in France, particularly that dukedom of Normandy, which was so important to that ruling family. Henry's son, Edward I, pretty warlike, family. Henry's son, Edward I, pretty warlike, and Edward's grandson, Edward III, was also an effective warrior. Edward III's situation, though, was transformed by an untimely series of deaths. In 1314, the French king Philip died, and then three of his sons and one of his grandsons all died one after the other over the next 14 years. It was one of the most spectacular and catastrophic inheritance crises in Western European history. The Capetian line, which had been so successful in producing reasonably healthy, tolerably competent boys, was now out of juice. And the merest surviving male relative was the last king's nephew, who was

unfortunately Edward III of England. His mother Isabella was a daughter of Philip IV. She's known rather unfairly, but fantastically coolly, as the She-Wolf of France, but it's like one of those insults that when given actually becomes a badge of honour, like Margaret Thatcher being called the Iron Lady. The She-Wolf of France's son was now coming for the French crown. And that's the start of the Hundred Years' War. And that explains why Henry V, who was Edward III's descendant, was campaigning in France in the early 15th century. The English royal line hadn't had an entirely smooth time during the course of the Hundred Years' War. Richard II was deposed and murdered by his cousin, Henry IV. Henry IV was then embroiled

in a lengthy civil war, a huge uprising in Wales, a revolt of the overmighty Percy family in the north, problems with Scotland. It's all kicking off. In a battle during that civil war, his young son, Prince Henry, fought on his side at the Battle of Shrewsbury. He fought very bravely, he was terribly disfigured by an arrow in the face, and he commanded his own force in Wales. Raleigh has a royal apprentice. A Prince of Wales served such a brutal and effective royal apprenticeship as Henry V when he ascended to the throne. He was a warrior through and through. And he had a vision. He wanted to unite England. He wanted to breathe life into the ambitions of his predecessor, Edward III, to resurrect his claim to the French throne,

unite England with a common foreign enemy. It's the old trick, folks. A big foreign military invasion to try and unite folks at home. Henry V is the first king that really starts to embrace the English language. Obviously, since William the Conqueror, the official language of the English ruling elite had been Norman French. English is now used. Henry writes updates. He writes kind of proclamations on how his campaigns are going. He writes in English and has his officials read them aloud

in the shires. Henry also used this vision of an England united, fighting to restore his lawful rights as King of France on a foreign field, gathering much booty along the way. He uses that to inspire his parliament who vote him the taxation required to launch an invasion. And so Henry V, in 1415, age 29, launches his invasion of Normandy. And it's important that he landed in Normandy. He did not land in Calais, which was at that stage heavily fortified and was in English possession. He landed in Normandy because that was the place to re-establish his rights

as Duke of Normandy, secure the duchy, use that as a springboard to perhaps even take the crown of France. He lands with around 12,000 men. Thanks to Anne Currie, the brilliant Professor Anne Currie's work in the archives, we can be pretty sure that it was around 12,000 men. It was a bigger army than any assembled in the 13th century, so this was a huge national enterprise. 25% of those men were what we might loosely call knights. They wore heavy armour, they had a horse, they had all the equipment required, they were men-at-arms. They were paid a, they had a horse, they had all the equipment

required. They were men-at-arms. They were paid a shilling a day if they were sort of ordinary, if you like, men-at-arms, and two shillings a day if they were higher status. Dukes got a lot more. You were paid not on your military prowess, but where you fitted into the social hierarchy of England at the time. The other 75% are the famous archers, paid just 6p a day. So you can take a lot more archers than you can minute arms, it's much more cost effective, and they're also a gigantic force multiplier. They're armed with what's been described as the medieval machine gun. They're armed with the longbow, a viciously potent weapon that Henry would have learned all about on his campaigns in Wales in the early 15th

century, and on the fields of Shrewsbury seems to have almost cost young Henry his life. He'd have been left in no doubt as to the efficacy of the longbowmen. They could shoot rapid arrows over long ranges with great accuracy, with huge stopping power. It was a hugely effective weapon. For six weeks, Henry's force, though, was bogged down, besieging Harfleur. Harfleur now is a little town most people will not have heard of. It's been superseded by the giant artificial port built at Le Havre, just across the Seine estuary, but it fulfills the same strategic purpose. It is the port at the outlet of the Seine, the giant river that runs into the heart of France, into Paris. And thus it's a hugely

important position for trade and defence. Arfoe eventually surrendered, but it was a nightmare of a siege. Henry himself directed the whole thing. He was in the trenches, edging his artillery forward. Cannon are reasonably new in this period. Henry had used them to batter some of the castles held by Welsh rebels 10 years before. So he knew about sieges and he knew about the potency of cannon. He sighted them himself, he inched them closer and eventually opened a breach in a wall. The citizens of Harfleur, not fancying the prospect of English troops storming their city and the place being left to the mercy of rampaging Englishmen intent on theft, rape and the other horrors of war. So they surrendered. There was

an orderly transfer of power. Henry V was back in at least this one corner of Normandy. But it was much later than he hoped. It was now September. The campaigning season was coming to an end. He'd lost troops in the siege. He'd lost troops through the dysentery and disease that inevitably attended. A large gathering of soldiers in poor sanitary conditions staying in a camp with basic knowledge about fresh drinking water and the removal of human waste. And so he had a problem. But even so, he decided to march back through Normandy to Calais and there return to England. Now, why he did this, we can't be entirely sure.

It may have been that he was wishing to demonstrate that as Duke of Normandy, he was free to move through his duchy with impunity. It may have been that he was looking for a fight. He wanted to take on the French. He was daring them to come out and fight him as he carelessly walked across French terrain. And it may be that he wants to emulate the terrifying raids launched by Edward III and his son, the Black Prince, in the early phases of the Hundred Years' War. We know that he did want to get up in the French faces because he summoned the Dauphin, the other candidate for the French throne, the heir to the house of Valois, who claimed the French throne. He challenged the Dauphin to single combat. Now, the Dauphin never showed up, and for fairly obvious reasons. Henry V was a lean,

mean, killing machine. He had won his spurs on countless battlefields and in countless skirmishes in the hills of Snowdonian facing down the rebels at Shrewsbury. The Dauphin was a fat, lazy muppet. He got up at four in the afternoon, he banqueted all day. In fact, to be honest, he sounds like a more attractive character. Anyway, he was not suited, let's say, to a one-on-one combat at the height of the Middle Ages against Europe's premier warrior kings. He once collapsed when he was crossing

from one side of Paris to another. It was so exhausting. So let me say, he's not going to pick up a sword and fight Henry V. It's not going to happen. So Henry launches himself across Normandy, heading for Calais. Anne Currie, the brilliant

historian, thinks he put around 1,200 men into the garrison at Harfleur. She thinks he lost around 2,000 men. Either they went home to England, or they died or were disabled during the siege. So he's got perhaps 8,000 men. We know there is dysentery in the ranks, and we know they've got to march. They've got to march 260 miles in the space of two and a half weeks. The French army initially played it tactically wise. Henry needed to cross, as Edward III needed to cross before and so many armies before and since, they needed to cross the great water barrier of northern France, the River Somme. The French army blocked the crossings of the Somme on the north side, and Henry V was forced to go ever further inland to find a crossing that he could use. He was being drawn further and further away from Calais, his supplies

were being eaten up, his troops were getting ever more exhausted. It would not be the last time the Somme played its part in British military history. The English did finally cross the Somme at a place called Bethancourt and re-isolate themselves towards Calais. The French shadowed Henry's army. They were wary of this English king. But by the 24th of October, the two armies were facing each other. We don't know precisely where. It may be a narrow strip of land between the woods of Tramacourt and Azancourt, around 45 miles south of Calais, and the French were blocking the road. The English would later claim that there were around 60,000 French troops

present at what they would call the Battle of Agincourt. This is almost certainly nonsense. Anne Currie, again, thinks that perhaps there are 15,000. If it's good enough for her, it's good enough for me. They did outnumber the English, perhaps two to one. And they had with them the Eiffel. It was a sacred banner kept in extreme reverence at the Abbey of Saint-Denis. It was only brought out in the most dire emergencies for France,

beseeching God to bestow his divine favour on his French children, a favour without which, as everyone in the Middle Ages knew, it was impossible to succeed. The fact they'd brought the Oriflamme was a gesture of defiance, of great resolution, and the French would need it because they did not have effective leadership. There was the King of France, Charles VI, who was suffering and had been for a while from terrible mental illness. He thought he was made of glass. The Dofer, like I said, the next man in line, the senior member of the House of Valois, was completely useless. As a result, there was just a series of jockeying nobles at the head of the French army, and this would be

a problem. And more and more of these nobles were joining the French army all the time, bickering, trying to guarantee they'd have a place in the front rank, and arguing effectively about the strategy. Should they continue to shadow Henry, watch his ever-weakening force limping towards Calais and attack when the time was right? Or, for the honour of France, should they strike him now, here at Agincourt?

In the end, it seems that Henry may have taken that decision away from them, because it's Henry that initiates the battle. Okay, folks, it seems that Henry may have taken that decision away from them, because it's Henry that initiates the battle. Okay, folks, let's take a break there. More Agincourt in a second. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. I'm talking about the Battle of Agincourt. Find out what happens next after this break. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. 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.

But first of all, what's the terrain like? Terrain is everything in medieval warfare. Perhaps a 700 metre wide, very shallow valley, woods on either side, we know that. It was very thick, but it had recently been ploughed, of course, that time of year. The autumnal rains had to come, and it was thick northern French mud. As anyone who's walked across ploughed fields in northern France, as I have on far too many occasions, you will know that within about three seconds of starting, you get giant, muddy platelets attached to either foot. It is grim. Henry would be relying on this. He put his bowmen on either flank, in a slight U-shape, so they'd be able to

rain down arrows on anyone approaching at the centre of this valley. His men-at-arms were in the middle, a metal wall of shields, spears, battle axes, and swords. Famously, he ordered his archers to cut wooden stakes, logs with sharpened ends, driven into the ground so that the archers would be protected from heavy cavalry, a kind of porcupine-like defence. The Ottomans seemed to have used these stakes when fighting the Crusaders in earlier battles. His army was divided into three groups. Henry V commanded the centre. His cousin, the Duke of York, commanded the right

flank and an old experienced soldier, Baron Camois, commanded the left. Henry moved through the troops, talking to them before the battle. This is where we get this myth from, or this urban myth, where he says that the French were boasting they would chop two fingers off the right hand of every archer so they could never draw a longbow again if they were captured. And that's where we get the V sign from, the famous V sign. Is that an insult? Does that date from the period of Agincourt, where archers would flick two fingers up at the French to taunt them,

saying, I still have my fingers, and these fingers are going to rain pain down on your men? We don't know, but I like it. It's a good story. It might even be true. And his morale-boosting speech must have included the obvious point that it was a case of win this battle or die. The enemy lay between them and safety. Their only chance was to fight their way through and beyond the French army.

The French had a plan to deal with the archers. They knew about the potency of the English and Welsh archers. This was not a surprise to them. So their plan was that the cavalry would bear down on either flank and destroy the archers. Heavily armoured horses and men should have been able to scatter the lightly armed, well, unarmoured, basically, archers. But they were unable to put this plan to effect because Henry seized the initiative. He precipitated battle by advancing. He ordered the archers to up sticks, take their stakes out, and for his whole battle line to move forward. Then they put their stakes back in the ground. That would become the new front line. Now, this is the first one, what we call a bite and hold tactic. You move forward, you re-establish an

impenetrable front line, and then you unleash fire from that point. So the English advanced into range of the French, the two armies having been outside the range of any of their weapons the evening before. The English precipitate battle by advancing into range, putting their stakes down, and the Longbowmen open up. So the French army now find themselves under lethal bombardment. They have no choice. They have to attack, but they are not ready to do so. Their army, lacking a clear chain of command, is now under attack in battle. And elements of it take matters into their own hands.

We hear that there are fights that break out in the French army as noblemen and their followers struggle for prominence in the front line, a place where they will win the most glory. In fact, a place where they're most likely to end up screaming as mud poured through a helmet visor, as their bodies are trampled ever further deeper by their friends and foe alike. It was a fate that awaited many of the Frenchmen that day. While nobles jostled for position, the French cavalry did attack. Longbowmen are capable of shooting a dozen, perhaps even 20 arrows every minute. There are thousands of longbowmen

in the fields of Agincourt. Tens of thousands of arrows are smashing into the assembled French ranks and the cavalry as they set off. Many of these arrows won't find chinks in armour, they won't be capable of smashing through the new, improved, strengthened breastplates and helmets of the French knights, but some would find their mark. Some would go through visors or hit in the grooves in the armour where plates didn't quite overlap. Some arrows too would hit the flanks, the neck, the head of the horses. And even if they didn't penetrate skin and muscle, it must have been maddening, intolerable to be under a shower

of these metal-tipped missiles battering at you constantly. Within seconds, we hear from a contemporary account from a monk that the wounded and the panicking horses were galloping sideways, backwards, in all different directions, screaming, rearing up with pain and rage. They crashed into their own infantry that was starting their advance. They scattered their own men. They broke up the coherence of the cavalry charge. It would not now arrive upon the English archers, a great wave, a great solid wall of metal and horses, but as individuals, of blinded individuals screaming with pain and confusion. Horses took their riders galloping headlong into the woods off the battlefields, crashing into the undergrowth, hitting branches, throwing the riders off into tender mercies of English light troops that

lurked on the flanks. A contemporary chronicler called it a terrifying hail of arrows shot. Even if the cavalry did reach the English archers, the bristling wall of wooden stakes further eroded the energy of the assault, and the knights would have in ones and twos tried to hack their way through, sitting targets for archers now shooting at point-blank range. When a knight was on horse before he could get to his feet, archers were in with their long, thin knives and their mallets. They drove through the narrow islets of the French knights. The last thing the flower of French nobility saw

was a piece of steel heading straight for the brain. As the cavalry charge utterly failed to sweep away the English archers, they were then free to turn their attention to the slow-moving mass of French knights on foot that were moving towards the centre of the English line. They were up to their knees in mud, breathless, panting, exhausted, being pushed from behind, falling over, tripping, being lifted by their mates but sometimes left behind, pressed beneath the crush of men eager to come forward and do battle with the English. In the centre of the English line, Henry V taunting the French,

wearing a great golden crown on his helmet with Fleur-de-Lys, the symbol of Royal France, on them, trolling the French, gaslighting them in the most unimaginable way possible. His presence on French soil wearing the crown of France an outrage. The French line becoming ragged as people desperately lunge forward to try and get to grips with these English invaders as their colleagues lagged behind, stuck in the mud, exhausted from the exertions. Eventually, the ragged French attack reached the the mud, exhausted from the exertions. Eventually, the ragged French attack reached the English line. The fresh English men at arms, shoulder to shoulder, bound into a wall of steel.

Gasping to fill their lungs with oxygen, they went into hand-to-hand combat, which, for those of you who have done boxing or reenactors listening out there, will know is the most exhausting thing imaginable. Fit young men within 45 seconds, even a minute, wearing heavy armour, having stagged across that field, would have been barely able to wield their weapons with any strength. Their blows parried, their lunges lacking the power to get through chain mail, growing weaker with every second that passed. to get through chain mail, growing weaker with every second that passed.

The English were fresher, they almost certainly had a more regular order in their ranks, and they were able to see off this French attack, beating men to the ground, stepping forward, letting rear ranks dispatch the French wounded and dying. And yet, into this meat grinder, the French pulled more and more men. The English account speaks of the French wounded and dying. And yet into this meat grinder the French poured more and more men. The English account speaks of the French. It says that for those that were killed when

battle was first joined they fall at the front. So great was the undisciplined violence and pressure of the mass of men behind that the living fell on top of the dead and others falling on top of the living were killed as well. It's clear that within seconds of this infantry battle being joined, there was just a writhing mass of men bogged down the mud, bodies falling under the press, unable to stand up, drowning in thick mud, stamped down to the ground. Helpless men trapped beneath bodies, finished off with sharp blows from fresh Englishmen in the ranks behind,

screaming the utter impossibility of coordinating the battle, of telling the men behind to back off, more and more pressure driving you towards the sharp blades of English swords. Henry V in his happy place, in the thick of it, his brother Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, wounded in the groin, Henry standing over his wounded brother, daring the French to come after not one but two princes of the blood, part of Henry's crown hacked off by a French blade. The French dukes of Alençon and Barre slaughtered their noble rank of no use in the melee. We know little else about the fighting other than that it lasted perhaps three hours. We can imagine the exhaustion of Ben barely able to stand, like punch-drunk boxers staggering into yet another confrontation.

Perhaps the English army was well organised enough that there was a rotation scheme. It was possible, about four ranks deep, that after a period in the front line you'd be pulled back, given a chance to gather your breath, rest and recuperate as the second rank did the fighting. And that rotation, like penguins in a huddle, could go on and allow the men to fight on for some hours. It seems hard from the sources to believe the French were able to do that. And it's tempting to think that the English simply moved forward. In a way, almost like a tunnelling machine, just slowly and unstoppably breaking down the face of the rock that opposes it. The French troops, unable to retreat, unable to advance, found themselves in the face of a

well-organised English advance, in a situation where individual bravery and strength could do little to counter the methodical progress of a shield war manned by veteran killers. Perhaps the only French success of the day we know about was an attack on the lightly armed baggage train in the rear of the English army. We know that a member of the local gentry led a small number of men at arms and perhaps 600 lightly armed, you could say militiamen, local peasants, and seized some of Henry's personal possessions. It was a hit and run attack on the rear of the English army. We don't know if this was a deliberate strategy by the French or whether it was just spur of the moment opportunist banditry, but it did happen and we think it may have led to the so-called killing of the prisoners. At some stage during the battle,

King Henry was able to order the killing, the execution of many high status prisoners who'd been taken. He maybe feared a fifth column, He maybe feared they'd taken so many prisoners, they'd be able to rise up and attack the English from behind, or perhaps it was connected with this attack on the English camp, obviously in battle. Messages become rumours, become Chinese whispers very, very quickly indeed. So we do know that Henry ordered some, not all, of his higher-status prisoners killed. You have to imagine that as the French were advancing, many were killed. Some would be recognised, would scream, plead for their life, say they're worth a lot of money to their captors. They would be hauled out of the French ranks and passed to the rear where they'd be placed under a guard. These men would then be ransomed back,

their families would pay a huge amount of money to get them back. So they were valuable. So some attempt was made to ensure they captured and kept alive some of the highest stated prisoners, but in a savage, confusing battle. Like Agincourt, that was not always possible. And in the case of this battle, some of those prisoners were killed in cold blood. It's something that lots of commentators subsequently have talked about, but it's not something that seemed to have been regarded as a war crime at the time. By the end of the day, By the end of the day, by the end of the battle, a huge number of Frenchmen lay killed on the fields, perhaps as

many as 10,000, perhaps as many as a majority of their army. It gives a sense of how hard it was to retreat the nature of the battle. The bloody press of men, the soil conditions meant that that huge French mass of infantry must have largely been trapped and died where they stood, assailed on the flanks and from the rear by English archers, and chewed up from the front by the English men-at-arms. Over a hundred great lords lay dead. The three dukes I mentioned. Nine counts of Viscounts.

An archbishop? What was he doing there? France lost its constable. It lost its admiral. It had lost its master of crossbowmen with his three sons. It lost its master of the royal household. Henry, though, had taken some prisoners and he hadn't killed them all. He was able to stop the executions when he realised the situation had stabilised. Among them were the Dukes of Orléans and Bourbon, two of the most prominent Dukes of France. It was almost a decapitation of the French state, particularly the French nobility from the northwest of France. On the English side, extraordinarily, only perhaps

100, 200 killed. Among them was Henry's cousin, the Duke of York, whose heirs would go on to challenge Henry's son for the throne during the Wars of the Roses. I don't think it was linked to his death on the Battle of Agincourt. I don't think they blamed the House of Lancaster for their forebear's death on the battlefield of Agincourt, but I may be wrong. But he was the most prominent of a very, very short casualty list for the English. It was astonishingly one-sided battle. Afterwards, Henry, ever the able propagandist, sent a list of dead and captured French nobles around the shires, again in English. He made sure the reports

of the battle were read out across his kingdom. He went home. He waited in Kent for London to have the opportunity to put on a huge pageant. Giants greeted him at the gates of London. This was being cast as a David and Goliath-like victory. He entered London in a simple sort of smock, like Jesus entering Jerusalem. The people of London went bonkers. It all worked. Parliament voted him a gigantic new tax when he returned so he could continue his campaigns against the French. And those campaigns would strike a weakened France. Many of France's most prominent nobles and warriors had been killed. The House of Valois had been discredited. The Dofa had been discredited. When Henry did arrive back in France, not 1460 in the following year, but in 1417,

he would then build on the success of Agincourt and actually did manage to conquer the Duchy of Normandy. Agincourt, though, was not the decisive battle in that campaign to recapture Normandy or in his subsequent campaigns to try and conquer France. Agincourt was a moral victory. It was a victory that justified Henry's campaign of uniting England. Henry was established as a divinely favoured monarch, as one of the great warrior kings of English history. A country so recently divided by rebellion was now relatively united. There was a political consensus. Henry's position was untouchable. Agincourt seemed to be God's verdict on the House of Lancaster, and Henry could now rely on a united English polity to

launch his future campaigns of conquest. And that's why Agincourt has been evoked, I think, so much subsequently. Shakespeare evokes it in the late 16th century. Interesting, just in time for the Earl of Essex to go and take an army across Normandy and campaign on behalf of Elizabeth I in France. Churchill encouraged Laurence Olivier to shoot his Henry V film, of course, featuring the Battle of Agincourt, during the Second World War, in France. Churchill encouraged Laurence Olivier to shoot his Henry V film, of course, featuring the Battle of Agincourt, during the Second World War, in the build-up to D-Day, for wartime

propaganda purposes. Agincourt has always meant something unambiguous to the English. It is a story of successful foreign gambles, of taking on superior forces, and of English heroism and determination in the face of overwhelming odds. of taking on superior forces, and of English heroism and determination in the face of overwhelming odds.