Gone Medieval - Battle of Agincourt

Episode Date: October 23, 2026

The Battle of Agincourt is remembered as the ultimate David versus Goliath victory, where King Henry V’s small, exhausted army unleashed a devastating "hailstorm of arrows" to obliterate a French force twice their size. Dr. Eleanor Janega and Matt Lewis uncover how this legendary clash was actually a brilliantly calculated slaughter against a fractured nation, securing Henry's throne and permanently forging the myth of the English underdog.MOREQueen Isabella: She-Wolf of FranceListen on AppleListen on SpotifyAfter Agincourt: Henry V’s French CampaignsListen on AppleListen on SpotifyGone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis and Dr. Eleanor Janega. The video producer is McKenna Fernandez. Edited by Matthew Wilson. Studio manager is Hanif Hussain, production manager is Beth Donaldson.The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcastHistory Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™Watch Matt and Eleanor's film The Ascent to Power: Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II now on History Hit TV. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week, PLUS early access, ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. The Battle of Aschencore. It is the ultimate David versus Goliath story. In October 1415, a small, exhausted army of English archers led by King Henry V, faced down a French force twice their size, and somehow won a devastatingly swift victory. King Henry VIII lured a massive French country. cavalry charge into a narrow, swampy, tree-lined bottleneck. His hidden archers unleashing an armor-piercing hailstorm of arrows, obliterating the trapped forces.

Panicked, a crowd crush ensued, horses bolted. Under the weight of their armor and mud, thousands of men suffocated to death without ever being struck by a weapon. Henry V ruthlessly broke the laws of medieval warfare and took no prisoners. It was an absolute slaughter and carnage. But how did an exhausted, disease-ridden English army pull this off? Welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga.

And I'm Matt Lewis. And today we are getting knee-deep into this bloody clash to find out how it not only secured Henry's precarious throne, but also forged an underdog myth that still defines the British national memory today. Well, Matt, before we can get into what Agencourt was and how it played out, I think we kind of have to talk about what the Hundred Years' War is and why it started, because I think people now are really confused by this.

It's like, why on earth would the King of England have a claim to the throne of France? It seems really crazy to us, but that doesn't seem weird at all from a medieval perspective, right? Not at all, no. It's perfectly normal. Totally. And also, I mean, I'm British, so I'm going to have to say, Agincourt! Achencourt!

We're going to get there. Oh, no. Oh, no. It's like his Britishness has been activated. This is massive. Yeah. Yeah. I'm alive.

Yeah. We're going to get French nobility being killed. We're going to get Kings of England almost being killed. We're going to get archers with diarrhea having accidents everywhere. Normal. Yeah, standard. One of the foundational moment, you know, if Shakespeare can turn this into the foundational moment of English history for most people, I think. So it's going to be amazing when we get there.

But yeah, there is so much background to how we even arrived here. And we probably have to go back as far as 1066 and get to the Norman conquest. Because that's the moment in which someone with an interest in France is suddenly now king of England. And from a French history point of view, I think they would probably see this at the beginning of all of their problems for centuries and centuries to come. because England up until this point has largely looked to the North Sea and Scandinavia for all of its connections and has been quite insular otherwise and lightly connected to the continent but not really interested. And all of a sudden you've got a Norman king who has all of this territory in northern France, who has a relationship with the king of France that isn't always friendly with William the Conqueror. And he now has a crown as well and all of this extra land and resources. So suddenly the French king is having to think very carefully about what he does with one of his subjects, effectively.

And also the King of England is reorienting English focus to Northern Europe instead of out to the East. Yeah. And I think that this is, it's very difficult to put too much emphasis on how important this is for English history. Because it is, as you say, just a complete reframing of where politics happens and where money comes from. And I think that it is very important for us to state, for example, that, like, Normandy is an incredibly rich province, right? This is, there's a reason why a bunch of Vikings went there and we're like, yeah, I don't think I'm going to leave. Actually, right? So there's a ton of money to be made there. And especially when we see, like, William the Conqueror kind of come over, he's like, oh, yeah, I've conquered England, but still here.

I am here in Normandy. Thanks very much. And so you do have this constant, where does the actual power lie and where does the money come from? And I think that only becomes more complex when you get to our favorite married couple, Eleanor of Alcataine and Henry the second, right? Because when you then have Henry marry Eleanor and Eleanor is the largest landholder in France, suddenly the kings of England control more land than the King of France does, right? And there is always this dance back and forth that they do where the King of France, you know, you'll get a new king and they'll be like, okay, English king, you've got to come. do fealty, like Neil and you're my vassal and they're always like, I can't, I'm sick. I've got a bad knee.

I don't want to go down there. And so there is this always like, I don't want to admit that I am your subject when I am thing. So there's always this Frenchness. And I mean, let's be so for real. If you met the Kings of England at this point in time, they would not speak English. They would seem like Frenchmen. They would sound like Frenchmen.

Exactly. You would think that they are. And they probably would consider themselves more French than English still at this point by the time you're at Henry the second. He's an ingenjevin. Yeah, right? He's from the heart of France. And they speak French, they don't speak English.

English is that's for the people that they control. And I often argue as like a counterfactual that had, you know, the English won the whole thing. You know, they win a lot of good battles, as we'll get to. I think that we would probably be speaking French right now is what would have happened. It isn't that like France would have become English. It's that England would become France. When we get to the Hundred Years' War, it's a big kind of existential question in England, isn't it? What if we do this? What if we win? And the King of England becomes the King of France.

And France is the much bigger, much wealthier territory. Does England then become subservient to France? Because nobody in England wants that. So there is this whole kind of question of what it would mean if the King of England becomes the King of France. And I think that begins even under Henry II because you get particularly Louis I, the 7th, while he's struggling to have a son. And Henry is just accumulating all of this territory and looking more and more and more threatening, having more and more sons. and being more and more impressive and successful. I think you see moments where Louis is like, what if he comes to Paris? And I think that that is very difficult for us to get our heads around now

because we think of nations as always having existed as having these really neat borders, and that's just not medieval, right? And to be fair, I guess, that things are going really, really well for Henry. For John, his most trash son, which is saying something, You know, a lot less so, because John does manage, like, from the 13th century to lose a lot of the French territory. This is the thing.

I mean, John manages to be the worst of a really bad bunch of sons. So bad. And he just can't keep whole. I think it demonstrates just how impressive Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine were, that they hold all of this together. And we tend to mark 12.04 as the year that John loses it all, which is also the year Eleanor of Aquitaine is no longer around. Oopsie. I can't. I don't know how that happened.

No, it's almost like she's gone and it just fragments and falls apart. And John simply doesn't have the talent that his father had or even the ability of Richard, I guess, to lead men and inspire men into battle. And it just falls apart. He meets an incredibly impressive French king in Philip Augustus, who's just good at playing these games and who has arranged the chessboard while John's not looking ready to go into checkmate mode. But, you know, John loses pretty much everything. There's Gascany, really, is about all he has left by the end of his reign. But Gaskin is pretty good, though. Gaskin is a good bit.

Shout out. Good wine, good wine. But it's still important to the English economy, and you still feel like the French are looking at it and thinking, yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there soon. Because they want to get the English, the English king, out of France altogether. And you can understand why. Absolutely. And Gascany is still the bit that causes this friction, this, the problem of you need to go and do fealty for Gascany.

But no English king wants to get. get on his knee in front of the French king. So you often want to send your son to do it or make your excuses and get around it somehow. Yeah. And then I guess then if we fast forward to the 14th century, this is then where you somehow get the idea that possibly the king of England is supposed to be the king of France. So I think we, in order to understand that, we got to start in about 13, 28, and this is when Charles IV's line fails.

And now this is like when I start getting very, very interested because the reason his line fails is there were a series of affairs. It's a massive scandal, isn't it? Huge. Yeah, the Tower of Nestle affair where it turns out that not only was the Queen of France playing away, but like all of the princesses, all of the duchesses were having these affairs with knights. The knights in question are lightly tortured and killed as a result of this. But the thing that happens is that the succession is called into question because Charles did have heirs. But then everyone was like, well, we don't know if that is actually your kid. So, and then enter front of the podcast, Isabella the She-Wolf.

We love Isabel. Yeah. Up until this point, the Capetians have been incredibly successful at producing father-son, father-son, father-son, it's been great. But Charles is the third of three brothers to sit on the throne. and fail to produce an heir that succeed him. And all that's left of that line is their sister, Isabella. And she's happy to claim the throne for her son. You know, I've got a son.

He's pretty cool. He could come over and be king of France. That wouldn't be a problem, would it? She's also the one who leaked about all the affairs, too. Coincidentally, it's funny that Isabel noticed all of the shaggin. And then it's like, oh, but I do have a son. Yeah. Isn't it, isn't it?

We call her the she-wolf of France. I wonder if they call her the she-wolf of England. Chuck this hand-grenade into French politics. I like how they call her the she-wolf as an insult. And I'm like, no, that's so cool. That's actually real boss. So I'm just always like, yeah, the she-wolf. You get that on a badge or a hoodie or something.

So good, right? But the fundamental fact is what I find quite interesting here is she's right. Like, she is right. She is the heir. And technically, technically, her son should be the king of France. It's like legally, from a legal standpoint, she is correct. And the French are just like, no, no, no, because there's a big problem with her son in that he is already king of England. He is King Edward III of England.

And the French are looking at this and thinking, we can't have, we've spent centuries now trying to stop this happening. We can't just give the crown of France to an Englishman and the English king, worst of all, we have got to find a way. around this. One thing that medieval people are really good in these situations is going to the archives and finding themselves a long-lost law. Yeah. And that is exactly what they do now. They go into the archives and they go, scribble, scribble, scribble. It's this crazy. I found this. It's crazy. I found this. And it says here that women can inherit. Wow. Well, I really wanted, I really wanted Edwards to be the king by, oh, I found this in this dusty tomb. I found this thing that actually says women can inherit. And it's like, interesting. You want to go back in time and

explain that to Eleanor of Aquitaine that women can't. And I like the idea that Isabel is like, can I have a look at that document? And they're like, yeah, as soon as the ink's dry, hang on here it is. You know, I don't. Because what they do is claim that the Salic law in France. Salic law means that women can't inherit. And this dates back to the 7th or 8th century or something else. But if you go back to 7th or 8th, Salic law is a thing. But nowhere does it say that women can't inherit. In fact, it specifically sets out the rules and the boundaries around female inheritance. And in fact, in the earlier medieval period, you're more likely to get women inheriting than you are in the later medieval period because primogeniture and this idea that

everything should go to the sun hasn't been invented yet. It's a women inherit on a regular basis. So it makes no sense from a historical standpoint to say, oh, this thing from back then says that women can't inherit one that would actually be more likely, right? It's like, you may as well, just go back and say, well, we don't want to. Right? Let's says here, no, you can't be. It's the no kings of England club. But they pull the ancient card. They're like ancient law says, ancient law states. I love it.

I love it when medieval people do it. I love it when you have the donation of Constantine. I love it when you have like salad claw. I love it whenever they forge something. I think it's adorable, actually. So they get around the idea of giving the throne of France to an Englishman by giving it to one of Charles cousins, one of Isabella's cousins, Philip. And they're like, oh, he's the next male line heir to the throne. So we'll just give it to him.

And I think initially it seems like Edward is like, oh, whatever. I think Edward has kind of got his hands full with reestablishing the status quo in England. He's got some Scots to fight. You know, there was a lot going on. We're trying to show that there is a steady hand on the tiller, given the weirdness with his mum, you know, CR episodes on, you know, Isabella, for more information. But by the 15th century, this changes, right? So the disputes still going on by the time we hit the 1400s, right?

Absolutely. You know, Edward has, I mean, it all comes to a crunch, really, when the French king lays claim to Gascony, that there's final effort to drive the English out altogether, and Edward won't have it. And, you know, that's really the spark for what we will call the 100 years war, which I always like to imagine going back in time to the middle of the 14th century and saying, oh, we're right near the beginning of the 100 years war.

And like the what now? The what did you call it now? No. So by the time we get to the beginning of the 15th century, this is still rumbling on. So Richard II, Edward III has been quite successful until his later years when he's older and less able to pursue the war. Richard the second, utterly disinterested in the Hundred Years' War, more often making peace with the King of France. I mean, can you imagine such a thing? Well, he's very busy killing his own subjects.

Marrying French princesses. Honestly, honestly. You know. Henry IV similarly faces so many domestic problems that he would like to pursue the war in France, but he never really gets the opportunity to do it. So hostilities are still there very much just beneath the surface. And when Henry V, Henry the 4th son comes to the throne in 1413, I think he sees in the war in France an opportunity to unite a kingdom

behind a questioned and a questionable claim. So his father has faced 14 years of endless struggles and rebellions and desperate bids to prove that he's the legitimate king. And I think what Henry V, the masterstroke that he's the legitimate king, And I think what Henry V, the master stroke that he has, is nothing will unite the kingdom behind me like taking everybody to go and bash the French. Now, this is an important point because can you talk a little bit about why it is that Henry V sort of needs this? He needs a win, right? He needs some way of pointing public attention at something big he does because the situation at home is dicey.

Yeah, the Lancasterian claim is still wide open to claim. There are others, particularly the Mortimer's in the country who some people are thinking. thinking, well, if the Lancasterians can't do it, the Mortimer's arguably have a better hereditary claim to the throne. Maybe we should try that. And Henry has been, he's been raised in the conflicts of his father's reign, particularly in Wales. He spends a lot of his teenage years prosecuting a war to subdue Wales to Lancasterian rule. And he's exposed to all of the aspects of military life. You know, when he does go on campaign to France, we will see him meticulously planning his funding, his supply chains, making sure that everything is in place, that you complete

each step before you move on to the next one. And I think that's a result of his experiences in Wales because we so often see him writing back to his father and to Parliament and saying, we have no money, we have no men, nobody's willing to fight for us anymore, we can't win a war like this. And I think he actually learns the lessons from all of that so that when he becomes king, he's like he's got his little checklist of how you have a military campaign. And he means to pursue it. And he's also, you know, he's a man, 1403, the Battle of Shrewsbury when he's, what, 16. He's caught up in a battle with his father, for his father, on his father's side,

against all of these rebels, the most notably the Persies, who are also fighting in favour of the Mortimers and some Welsh rebels and things. O'Englindu doesn't turn up there, unfortunately, which is probably a good thing for the English. But Henry the 5th, when he's still Prince Henry at this point, is at some point during that battle, hidden the face by an arrow, which embeds itself several inches into his cheek. And there is this whole process of royal surgeon named John Bradmore gets called. Lots of doctors are looking at it. It's like, I don't want to pull an arrow out of the prince's face.

Oh, it's so metal, though, right? I mean, it's got to be the most metal injury that any king takes in the medieval period. So shout out. I think it is. Yeah, yeah. And this royal surgeon John Bradmore, he has to invent, because they can obviously pull the arrow shaft out, but it leaves the head. embedded in the face

and somehow you've got to get this out without touching nerves and damaging anything or causing too much blood loss. So John Bradmore ends up inventing this special implement that you can you put it into the gap

where the arrow shaft has left it and then it spreads itself you screw it down and it spreads itself wider so that it grips the inside of the arrow shaft and then you can pull it out and he writes a book

about this treatment because it makes him a celebrity obviously. You just save the Prince of Wales life and he talks all about how you have to do this so carefully and then he goes into detail of how he packs the wounds over the several months that follow,

changing the dressings regularly, using honey, which we now know is a really powerful antiseptic. And he gradually packs the wound with smaller and smaller packing so that it seals and heals slowly around it. And Henry is left with a scar down his face for the rest of his life.

It's suggested that that's the reason the only portrait that we have of him is in profile because it's the side of his face that doesn't have a massive scar. I mean, if you've got a scar like that. Oh, I would show it off. I'd be like, oh, this, this little thing. Yeah.

And that's why I'm the king. This is what happens if you miss. Yeah, right. It's like, you know, imagine being able to take an error to the face and live to tell the tale, right? And I mean, I do think that this is just such an important part of the backstory because what this does is it kind of establishes for him what he is, like what he does. You know, this is a guy who is, he's an action king. Yeah. You know, there are diplomacy kings.

There are do nothing kings who kind of mess it all up. There are court kings. There's different ways of doing it. And he is a military guy, right? And I think for me, that wound is also a little bit. It's like a boxer the first time they get in the ring. The idea of taking a punch in the face must be really hard to think about. But here's a man who's taken the hardest punch that isn't going to kill you.

What are they going to do? Shoot me in the face with an arrow? Yeah. Like, I've already lived through it, you know. And if you survive that, there must be a bit of you that feels a little bit invincible. God must want you to be here for a purpose. He wants you for a reason. And what is that reason? Maybe it's to conquer France. So how does he go about doing this? Because it makes sense that we're having these fights back

and forth with Wales, many such cases. The English simply love to fight whoever is next door. What makes him say, we're getting in the ships, boys, we're going down to France? I think it's a combination of his own problems at home. And focusing everybody on the idea of glory and wealth and plunder abroad is always a unified. thing. It's something that everyone can get behind. They can kind of forget that they don't like the Lancasterian regime if this works, because it will make them rich and it will make them famous and everybody wants that. But allied to that, we have a situation in which the current king of France, Charles I 6th, has been on the throne for quite a while, but he is suffering

from incredible mental health problems. He's the king who will frequently think he's made of glass and be terrified that if one of his courtiers touches him, he'll shatter. He's had breakdowns in which he's killed members of his court before. There are moments when he doesn't wash for months and months. He won't change his clothes. He doesn't recognize his own wife and children very often. His wife is having to act as regent of France while dealing with the fact that the king behaves like this.

One of his palaces, we're told, they brick up all of the downstairs doors and windows because he's prone to wandering around in the night and just going off out the door. And they find him wondering around the grounds of palaces in the cold in the middle of the night. So they brick everything up so he can't do. this. So France as well is in a mess and this makes France vulnerable. And so Henry has this kind of perfect storm of I need to solve problems at home and I've got a really soft, juicy target over there that everyone will get behind me attacking. So what does he put together in terms of a consensurate army in order to do this? Because obviously what you're going to want to do is

you're going to want to scoop up this nobility. And yeah, it's very smart on his part because if you go manage to kidnap some French people, if you were sort of raiding the French countryside as opposed to the English countryside, right? It's like, okay, great, we can go get paid. So who is he able to bring along on this little moneymaking enterprise? I mean, most of the nobility of England, they want in on this because there is the opportunity of land and money and eternal fame and glory. But he also raises a really significantly sized army, probably about 12,000 men. This is a significant English army for the period. Probably, and one of the things that he does. So he alters the constituency of an English army. He only really

looks at taking 25% men at arms. So the men who are going to fight either on horseback or dismounted with pole arms, probably not swords, but the other 75% is archers. So he's leaning heavily on the success of the English longbow in the previous century. Edward III has really brought this to the fore. And he's redoubling the reliance on. that. The French still haven't found a way to deal with English Longbow Warfare. French chivalry doesn't allow them to believe that an ordinary man should be able to come off his fields on the farm and kill a French knight who's been training for 20 years to get here. It shouldn't be allowed to happen. It's an abomination. And somehow they just don't feel they

need to deal with it. It's like, well, they just shouldn't do it. I think that you're bang on here. It is one of these things where it's cultural, where basically they're saying this is an inversion of the natural order, you know, this idea that there is a natural order with the nobility at the top. And so I was like, well, just don't do that. No, don't. You're being weird. That's weird. And so, and to an extent, I think what is happening here is that to pivot and say, okay, well, obviously they're going to be coming with a bunch of longbowmen, maybe we should develop archery skills. Like, everyone's like, no, I will never develop archery skills. Well, what is our tactic for dealing with this? We don't need one.

And they're like, no, no, got a horse, big, big horse back there. And so it is actually for them almost existential, right? If you admitted that an ordinary dude with a bow was a problem, then why do we have the nobility at all? At the end of your lifestyle, if you're a French knight whose entire existence revolves around doing this, if you admit that what you're doing is pointless and worthless on a battlefield and anybody could do it better, what's the point of view? And this is, I think, so crucial to understanding what goes on in the 100 years of war because people are just sort of like, how is it?

The English kind of keep doing exactly the same thing over and over again, and the French keep running into this trap. Listen, military theory is very different in that they don't really have some here. It's a cultural thing. It's an existential thing. This means something, right? And we will see this happen throughout the medieval period over and over again. And indeed, like, one of the hallmarks of moving into the modern era is rich people being like,

it does seem as though poor people can kill us. You know. Who have thought? It's only been almost 100 years of proving that this is the case. Yeah, yeah. We might have to accept it. And Henry does, as he's preparing to leave England on the South Coast at Southampton, the need for this campaign is really reinforced for him because I mentioned the Mortimer's earlier.

at Edmund Mortimer the 5th Earl of March, kind of comes to Henry V at Southampton. And he's like, there's a bit of a plot to make me king, and I don't want to be king. But here's the list of the names of people who are planning to do this. Just so you know, I will absolutely rat these people out. Turning state's evidence in return for immunity. And he does turn in several of his close-faced brother-in-law is the most significant among things. Who amongst us doesn't want to turn on our in-laws now? I love my in-laws.

Shout out in-laws. And this is also Richard of Connersborough, the Earl of Cambridge, who is the father of Richard Duke of York, the grandfather of Edward the 4th and Richard the 3rd. So this is kind of the Yorkist dynasty getting off on a really bad footing with the Lancasterians and Henry V. So Henry VIII executes the three ringleaders, including his brother-in-law, and a couple of others who were close friends as well. You know, he's probably feeling quite personally betrayed at this point.

But I think what this does is reinforced to him, the absolute necessity of doing this. We have got to get a project. These guys are too busy. You just have to focus their attention somewhere else. And, you know, like, listen, a little money comes slowing in. You don't care about being King of England anymore or advisor to a new King of England, right? Just you have enough money. Go on a nice holiday.

Yeah. So having done that, you know, he fairly quickly gets all of the men and horses and supplies into a ship, well, 1,500 ships, and sales them across the channel. And so they go to Harfleur. First, what is it about Harfleur that makes them decide this is the number one target? I think Henry is looking for a good beachhead, a good base, somewhere that he can take, that he's then able to defend, from which he can set up the supply chains that he's going to want in order to help support the rest of his campaign into Normandy. You know, he can't know what that's going to look like. But I think all of that stuff in Wales has taught him that without that firm base, you know, you could tear around the countryside.

the Black Prince doing it in the previous century, with all the cheviches, but that doesn't actually win you territory. It upsets people. It annoys people. It does. Yeah. But it doesn't actually win you, you need to take a town from which you can base yourself. And Harfleur is somewhere, just across the channel, on the coast. If he can take that, he can base himself there, and he can ferry supplies backwards and forwards much more easily. And they do take Harfler. But it takes longer than he wanted it to. Well, right, because I think that he's right that it was the softest target. But it's not just, oh yeah, well, here you go, you may have Harfleur, right?

Because to an extent, they're like, yeah, the English might come over at any moment. They are over there, right? Yeah, yeah. And this is, Harfleur is where Shakespeare gives us the once more into the breach and the glorious storming of a hole in the wall in the city. But it didn't happen. Well, listen, we do like it. I mean, the man has allowed some dramatic license.

Yeah, I mean, Harfleur is just starved and beaten into submission. Because Henry doesn't want to do too much damage to the city if he can. and avoid it because he's then got to repair that damage. He needs it. Yeah. Like, I mean, you don't want to, you do not want to actually bring down the walls of a city that you're intending to take and uses a strategic base to ferry men and supplies across us, right? That would be bad. But I mean, also, it's not the longest siege in the world, you know, it's about six weeks. We get a nice outbreak of dysentery. Oh, it's standard. Yeah. Henry must be used to by now. I know, right. It's just like.

Watching men having violent dysentery everywhere. But it has delayed him longer than he wants. He's probably done more damage to the city than he would have liked to. have done and now he has to garrison that city and set about repairing it well enough for that garrison to defend it too. So that requires him to divide his force already, which is not ideal. He must have known he was going to have to do this to keep Halfleur, but maybe he was hoping you could leave a smaller garrison there. But so many men either have to stay in Halfleur or have been killed during the siege or died of dysentery or had to ship back home. Some of the nobility, you know, have to ship back home ill as a result of.

of the siege of Halfler, that by some estimates, half his force is consumed by all of this, and he's only left with maybe just over 6,000 men by the time he comes to leave Halfler. Which is crazy when you think about it, right? You know, you come over with this incredible massive people, and it's like who would win 12,000 men or one little city on the Norman coast. And it turns out, I mean, they will win, but not by much. It's not glorious. Yeah, they don't make it easy. And you get lots of discussion amongst Henry's advisors at this point of what they should do next. Because I think a lot of them are like, well, obviously we get back in a boat and go back to England and we reset and we prepare to come again. You know, we hold Hauffler,

maybe till next year and we'll come back and springboard from there. And I think Henry is the one who is so acutely aware that this isn't enough. The idea of this project is to unite everyone behind him. If he goes home, having raised loads of taxes and loads of loans and raised loads to hopes and promised his nobility so much if he now goes home and says, we took one town. And it's one thing if you have to go home yourself because it's like, I'm afraid I have dysentery and I might be dying. Like it's okay for you to sort of exit across the channel. It's different to say, and well, our work here is done. I said we were going to take over a frost. And by that, I mean, Harfleur. You know, it's a come down at the very least.

So it seems to be Henry's idea that they go to Calais instead, which is a city that a town that they still hold on the northern coast to, since Edward III's reign, he'd taken that. It's a little enclave of England on the north coast of France. And he says, well, we'll go to Calais. And all of his men are great, great idea. We'll sort the ships out and we'll sail around to Calais. And Henry's like, no, no, no, no.

We're not going to sail to Calais. Everyone's like, what? We're going to have a nice stroll. She's like, oh, come on, to stretch the legs a little bit. You know, you know what's going to really help you get over the dysentery? Yeah, just a bit of a walk. Yeah. Walk it off.

What could possibly go wrong as well? We'll just march through hostile territory for several hundred miles. We'll take enough supplies to last us maybe the length of the march plus a day. That'll be fine. It'll be fine. We've got one day, you know. As it turns out, the French aren't willing to just let them have a little casual stroll. There's a French army that have been closing on Haarfleur that now begin to tail.

the English army. There is another French army in the east who have been massing and are moving to meet the English army. And you get this cat mouse across northern France. Henry is desperate to recreate Edward III's crossing of the Ford at Blanche Tack. That's seen as a glorious moment for Edward III that he achieves this. And Henry makes a beeline there and it's clearly like, I need to emulate Edward III. I need to show people who I am and what I'm going to achieve and that I'm not scared of the French because I should be the king of France, right? And all of these French armies are closing around him.

And again, before we get to Agincourt, we get this weird moment where the French kind of cut Henry off and they send representatives to negotiate. And Henry's like, yeah, sure, we can have a talk. And they say, we'll arrange to have a battle. You know, we'll go maybe 50 miles to the northeast somewhere. We'll pick a nice open fit. I've got an adjust spot.

It'll be great. We won't be interrupted. We'll march there together and then we'll have a fight when we get there. Yeah, yeah. And Henry's like, yeah, that sounds absolutely great. We'll do that. I'll follow you.

And so the French set up, completely believing that Henry is into this, that he should be bound by chivalry. To be fair, that's literally the way wars used to be prosecuted. This is something we get asked about a lot of things. Well, how did they pick a time and place for battles? Like, they would talk about it. Yeah.

They would say, hey, yeah, come meet me at this field. and will hit each other. And that's literally, literally how it was done. And it's because of these conceptions of chivalry and what you owe to each other at this level of society. It's like when you were at school and there was always a spot that everyone went to for a fight and it's like, I see you there at lunchtime

and the whole school will gather around and shout fight, fight, fight. It's exactly the same as that really. And so they begin to march off towards this appointed spot and Henry, you know, starts to march a little bit slower. Let's the French get a little bit ahead of him. And it's like, oh, you know, my bad knee's playing up. The scar on my face is aching a little bit.

I can't walk quickly with a bad face. And he lets him get a little bit ahead of him. And then he turns north and tries to run to Calais. I love it. I love it. And the French, you know, obviously they look over their shoulder at some point. Like, wait a minute. Where'd those guys go? Where did they go? Yeah.

And so they then moved to cut Henry off before he gets to Calais. And that's why this happens where it happens. happens. Henry manages to pick this field near the town of Azenkore, which there's a forest on either side, so it narrows the field a little bit more. So this is clearly him picking tactics that he thinks are going to favour him. You know, the French force is clearly absolutely huge. If he just stands there in a field and fights these people, he's going to lose. And so he is doing whatever he can to try and craft and create any advantage possible. And he's going back to that, you know, Spartan, 300 principle of getting the hot gates and narrowing the field because that suits Henry's smaller numbers. And so by the time he's camping there in this field, he's calculating that this is where he wants to fight the French because it's the only hope that he has of even surviving, let alone winning. Absolutely. Because there are just so, so many French troops, they are not at this juncture riddled with dysentery and tired and behind enemy lines. You know, every single

thing is going for them. They've got the numbers. They've got the health. It would in an even contest, if it was just one big open field, there would be no hope, really. You do need to use every tactical advantage that you can. And he does this. And to his credit, the English play a blinder, right? Like, they really, really do. Absolutely kick the hell out of them. Absolutely. And, you know, Henry picks this field between these two bits of forest. It's freshly tilled as well, which is great at hampering a cavalry charge. And the night before the battle, it rains. So all of that tilled soil becomes mud. And Henry, again, you know, God helped me survive this because he wants me here for a purpose.

Now God is creating conditions I couldn't barely have hoped for. We've got now a muddy field that the French are going to try and charge their heavy cavalry across. And at some point, as well, worth mentioning, at some point during those earlier meetings and negotiations, Henry's managed to capture a couple of French people. I'm sorry, it is really dishonorable. It's very, very funny. It's like, you don't get to kidnap people who have like come to negotiate. And he's like, yeah, I do.

Says who? What are you going to do? You know, like, oh, God. But he, I mean, the English sources don't tell us this, but he almost certainly engages in some light torture to extract from these people the French battle plan. And the French battle plan is clearly, well, plan A is a heavy cavalry charge. plan B is to try plan A again

I'm like I love the idea of having to torture that some French nights it's like babe I could tell you that for free I think that you could just go ask the peasant down the way and they'll be like as things they are probably going to use their horses no you know like the only tactic in town it's like 100% just that so I mean and this I think this is important right because I think we do look at this decisive victory and this very interesting thing

and we go huh the plucky English What are they like? And I'm like, um, kind of bad, actually. Like, these are bad people doing bad things for like no particular reason. And who does it end up weighing heavily upon? Like, I don't really care about what happens to the French, you know, cavalry. I care about the peasants who are like, this was my field. I was going to put going here.

I did. I should be really careful doing French accents. I know. Sorry, listen. I love them. And I wish that my French was better. Thank you. By this point, so we've got, in terms of the English army, they've been walking for 200 miles.

The detours they've made to avoid the French mean the march has taken longer than it was meant to, and they really started to run out with food. Their shoes are worn out. They are down to maybe five, six thousand men, mostly archers at this point, which isn't really the way you would want to prosecute a battle. Henry's going to have to make the most of that. And, of course, they've all got dysentery. So we get one, I mean, we get some really nice source material for Agincour. There's an English monk who's in the baggage train who's sitting there on his cart writing down everything that's happening.

And people like him are telling us that some of the archers are so ill that they're having to line up and cut the backs out of their hose so that they can freely have dysentery on the field behind them without distracting themselves. Yo, like the way I would just be like, it's fine, I'll die. I guess I'm dying. It's pretty gross And interestingly There's another bit of source material That tells us that the English All Take a Knee before the battle Take a piece of soil from the ground

And put it under their tongue Almost as if they're receiving communion at mass But you combine that with people Cutting the Bags out their hose And having diarrhea on the ground It gets pretty gross pretty quickly Unfortunately we're not beating the allegations currently We're constantly like

Listen the entire medieval period wasn't muddy and gross And then like Agencore happens And I'm like, there are some exceptions. Agincourt was muddy and pretty gross. But Agencourt is weird, though. That's why we talk about it, right? And the other thing that Henry has done as well is cause all of his men to get a kind of six-foot length of wood and sharpen it at both ends of these big stakes. And his big move is to drive these into the ground in front of his army to provide what the French would call their hedgehog formation,

this way of fending off a heavy cavalry charge. But he's going to do it with wooden stakes instead of using men to do it. because he doesn't have enough men. So this is a bit of a masterstroke. Unless you're a sick archer who's had no food and has dysentery and now you've got a six-foot pole to carry around as well. Thanks for that, Henry. Very kind of view.

Cool, cool. So the English get up in the morning, hammer these stakes into the ground and stand there ready for battle. And on the French side, we've got the absolute flower of French chivalry. At a time when French chivalry was the flower of European chivalry. Some of the finest knights in France are there, Marshall Bossy Gore, all of these kind of really famous. names. The Duke of Orlean has turned up. The issue that they have is unlike the English, they have no king there. So Charles the 6th, King of France, too ill to be on the battlefield.

His son, the Dofan, the Prince of Wales, doesn't show up? Unlike the film The King, where Robert Pattinson turns up with a funny French accent and falls over in the mud, the Dofan just doesn't show up. So the problem for the French is some of the sources give them between 60 and 100,000 men, because of course they do. Of course they do. Probably not, folks. I mean, I would say probably 20. I would reckon, yeah.

I think you're talking somewhere around that, which it was huge. But what they lack is solid leadership. And what they've got is maybe 20 men who will want to state their claim to be in charge, who will want to argue about who's going to go first, who's going to get the glory of killing the English king. I mean, this is a moment in which reputations to the French mind are going to be defined for generations to come. You could be the man who killed the English king at Agincourt. Imagine.

And so they're all squabbling and fighting over who's going to get the glory of doing all of this. And Henry is standing there watching this. And the other thing, the advantage of the French have is they can wait as long as you like. Yeah. The English are the ones who are trapped and have no food and nowhere to go. And so Henry watches all of this argument going on. The French clearly aren't quite ready for battle yet. And he's standing there just out of Longbow shot.

And so what he says to all of those tired, century ridden hungry archers is you know those six-foot poles you just planted yank them all up oh god and what we're going to do is move forward into long bow range and then replant the the staves and at this point i mean one of the big what ifs if what if the french had seen the english pulling those stakes up and we're like and like now's the time yeah yeah they would have absolutely ridden through the english even in the muddy field and everything else the english with with staves with big long poles in their hand, not got their bows ready, the heavy French cavalry would have just ridden down the English in moments,

and it would have been over. But Henry is relying on the fact that the French are too busy arguing, which it turns out they are. They are. So he moves closer, replants those staves within longbow range, and tells his men to start firing. Because this puts all of the pressure on the French. The French can no longer just stand there and wait

and starve the English out and force them to move first. And one of the maxims of medieval warfare is the army that moves first will tend to lose. And so Henry, he's moved his position forward, but he's now holding that position. And he's relying on the longbow fire to force the French to move. They can't just sit there under the shower of arrows all day.

They're going to have to move. And by forcing them to move, he's giving himself another advantage. And this is interesting because part of what happens, there is, of course, the fact that, yeah, getting shot at by arrows that is going to, it's going to clarify things, right? But they can't retreat because there's so many people

and you're funneled into this small space. So, you know, trying to get everyone to retreat would mean that like the baggage train has to move and then you have to, and everybody's got to move, right? Because this is, again, the flower of French chivalry, we've got all of our heavy cavalry up the front. So they're all standing there. And it is, you know, like a gadfly.

You know, these things, it's just kind of poking at you. There is nowhere to go except forward. Yeah. And it's taunting. Are you really just going to sit there on your horses and take this? You're not going to come and fight us? Wow. Like I thought that you were a big fancy night.

And you're just going to let these commoners shoot at you. That's crazy. Are you scared? Exactly. Are you scared of us? And so the taunting works. And the French, you know, they go back to the battle plan and like, what was it we're going to do? Oh, yes.

Oh, charge with the horses. Yes. And so they decided to do that across the muddy wet field under heavy fire from the English longbows. And Henry at this point as well, is worth mentioning, has put a crown on his helm. And this is really striking because it's an odd thing for a king to do in battle. You're really marking yourself out as a target.

But you're also showing your men exactly where you are. And you're saying, I'm here, he's at the front of the army. I'm going to fight with you. And if we're going to die, I'm going to die with you. you. I'm not staying at the back on a horse hoping to get away. We're very much all in this together. And that's such a powerful thing for a king to say, you know, an ordinary archer can stand next to the king of England and know that he's going to fight with you. But I also think, I'm utterly convinced that this is also Henry putting the Lancasterian claim to the throne of England

before God for judgment, because who's going to decide the outcome of this battle? The odds are stacked against Henry, but God's going to decide the outcome. And if God wants Henry for a greater purpose and wants him to be king of England. He saved him from that arrow because he wants him. If this is his purpose, then God will save him today. And I think it's difficult for people now to understand this. But this is a legitimate way of organizing the world according to medieval people. They really do believe that God is looking in on things, especially from a royal perspective.

The entire reason that royalty exists is they say, oh yeah, well, God probably wants it this way. Right. And so you can add this meaning onto things. You can say that essentially we can allow God to prosecute this. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, to be fair, for Henry, plays a blinder. It does. You know, the French get churned up in the mud, cut down by the arrows. They go back to their battle plan and they're like, right, this isn't working. What was plan B? Right. It was to do plan A again. Right, let's do it again. And they just keep pouring in this heavy cavalry. who are now having to try and charge over their own fallen men

and there are horses running back at them without their riders anymore. There are French knights being trampled into the mud. There are bodies piling up in front of the English forces. When the English archers run out of arrows, we told you know, they all draw their daggers and run out into the mud and they're just delivering killing blows to all of these knights on the floor. And it's absolute slaughter and carnage. And the French just keep going.

Just keep going. And I think one of the things we should point out here is part of the reason the French keep going and part of what is so confusing about this is you're not supposed to kill the knights. Yeah. You're supposed to kidnap the knights and then you're supposed to ransom them back for a bunch of money. You're not, no one is supposed to be dying in these circumstances. If you die, it's kind of unlucky. But if it is an international battle, the thing that you're supposed to be doing is rich guy tag. One rich guy is supposed to be like, ha ha, I've got to.

You come with me. Now, you're going to stay in my castle until the people at your castle give me money. And these cars are like, no, we're killing them. Yeah. Because if you are some random archer, you know, like you've come down from Chester or something like that, right? Then you're like, I can't ransom anybody, right? Like, that's not how. I don't have a castle to keep him in.

No, exactly. So you're just like, I want to survive. And the best way of doing that is killing these people because it's the poor people who die. It's not the rich people who die. But there are some English. knights who are taking some of the really high-profile French prisoners that survive and taking them to the back of the army with the intention of ransoming them. So amidst the slaughter, there is still this focus on the financial benefits of a medieval battle too.

And this causes a problem for Henry quite famously and controversially when news arrives that there is a French reinforcement coming around the back of the English. So they're about to be outflanked and their baggage train is going to be attacked. And so Henry is then faced with the prospect of being caught between two French armies. And he seems to be worried that if all of those French prisoners were freed and rearmed, it's more people behind you who are going to fight for you. And so we're told he gives this order to kill the prisoners of war, which is so often held against him as it's a war crime effectively.

But the medieval rules of war are really clear on this. They say you don't kill prisoners of war unless. Unless. Unless. they will pose a threat to your men because Henry's ultimate responsibility is to the men fighting for him and if those prisoners are likely to be rearmed

and come and kill his men then he's almost duty bound to give that order. It's expected it's within the rules of medieval warfare within the rules of engagement for him to do that. And we also know that when it becomes clear that that rumour of French reinforcements was false that he rescinds that order,

he takes away that order. So we don't know how many prisoners are killed. We don't know if any are killed. But as soon as he's able to, he takes back that order. So it's definitely not a nice thing to be doing. But in the context of 1415, it's pretty standard. You know, actually, it's even weirdly beyond standard because it's sort of like, yeah, the reason it doesn't come up a lot is that this doesn't happen. You don't ordinarily have people getting sandwiched between two parts of an army. So the reason other people don't get faced with this is that Agincourt is just weird.

Yeah. It's just odd. One of the striking things is that afterwards we don't see a single French source criticise Henry for giving that order. We see them criticise the French for being disorganised, for failing to capitalize on all of the advantages that they had for squabbling amongst themselves. We even see French sources that criticised a force that was turning up late for creating the rumour that there was going to be attack from the rear that causes Henry to give this order.

So they're pretty clear that Henry was well within his rights to do this and the French created a situation in which he was almost compelled to give that order. And there's also one of the other moments in Agincourt that I like is that, not that I like, no, I think it's interesting. Interesting. Is that Henry's little brother, Humphrey, the Duke of Gloucester, is there. And he at one point, fighting in the front lines is knocked to the ground. And all of these French knights gather around him to deliver the killing blow.

and he's in his late teens about to be slaughtered at Agincourt. And all of a sudden, cinematic moment, this literal knight in shining armour steps across his body, swinging his sword and beating all of these knights away as other men reach him from behind and drag Humphrey's armoured body away through the mud. And this figure that has stepped over him is only his big brother, the king, Henry. And we're told that this is the moment at which Henry gets so close. to the French, that one of the Fleur de Leon's crown is hacked off by the blade of a French weapon. He's put himself within a whisker of being killed in order to save his little brother.

I mean, that's impressive and cool. Yeah, we do like that. It is nice to actually rescue people. Yeah. Fundamentally. Look, incredible battle. One of the things that I think is most impressive about it is how short it is. Yeah.

Three hours. Like, what do you mean? It's three hours, right? We see medieval battles that happen, and it goes. all day. It goes into the night. They have a light breakfast and then they're back at it, right? This one, they're done by lunch. And given the overwhelming nature of the French forces, you feel like it should have gone on and on and on. But the ground just gets so impassable. The bodies get piled so high. And the losses are just so devastating there. The French leadership

is just being wiped out. And everybody at the back is thinking, we don't, we don't even, they gave us plan A and plan B, but we don't know what plan C. So do we just go home? Quite right too. I would. Yeah, absolutely. And it's at this point that Henry instructs the heralds of both sides to come together. And the function of a herald is to decide who has won the battle.

The English and French heralds have a conflab and of like, well, pretty clearly. It seems like you're all dead. And Henry asks the French herald for the name of the nearest French castle, which is how you name a battle. And he's told it's Azenkore. And so it becomes called the Battle of Anglicized Agincourt. Yeah. And Henry has won completely against the odds.

And this is a huge propaganda victory. Oh, yeah. A religious victory. You know, God really loves Henry now. So who is going to rebel against him in England? And he has devastated the French polity because that's not just all of the men in France who know how to fight. That's all of the politicians of France as well.

Absolutely. And I think that it's this resounding victory for the concept that the English can cause problems, right? We're sort of, you know, it's been quite some time since, you know, Cressie. We've learned nothing, which is cool. But basically what it shows is that this is something that can continue to happen. And I mean, I think most crucially for Henry V, what it really does is it secures England, right? I'm not sure that it really means anything in terms of like the 100 years war writ large. You know, it's a very smashing victory.

And we talk about it all the time because of this propaganda victory. Right. So the first thing that Henry does is he's like, everybody go home and talk about how cool I was. And I saved my brother. And I killed all those French guys. And they didn't have an answer for this. And it's like, and we're still doing it. We're doing that propaganda right now.

That's how successful that was. Absolutely. And Henry is writing letters home saying, you know, it'd be really nice if there was a pageant. when I got home, just so everybody knows how impressive this is. Wouldn't it be crazy? There was like a big party when I go home. I don't know.

I don't know, right? If you guys could throw me a surprise party, that'd be great. That'd be cool. But this is the thing. I do think that within the Hundred Years' War, especially if you're in the Anglophone world, we're like, well, at first there was the Battle of Cressey. And then there was Ashton Corps.

And then Joan of Arc. And I don't know what happened. Yeah. It was crazy, right? And it's interesting because those are the ones that we really latch on to. Those are the ones that we talk about. And yes, okay, so England has gained some new territory here. You know, we've got these toeholds.

It's not just Calais anymore. You've got a little bit more. How does this really shake out in terms of territory, though? I mean, Henry's gained nothing in territory. He's still just got half-flur to add to Calais, and that's it. He hasn't taken any lands while he's been marching, limping his way across France. And so what he does is realize that he's actually improved his opportunity to go back and do it again because not only do the French now have a weak and ineffectual king, they have no nobility.

And they've demonstrated to him that whatever nobility is left has no sense of unity and purpose. They're busy squabbling amongst themselves. And this particularly breaks down into the Burgundian and Arminac factions in France. and in a short time after Agincourt, you see them tearing at each other's throats. And so Henry is sitting in England thinking, well, that looks really enticing. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. And I mean, I think that this is actually really important. I mean, I love the Burgundian-Armniac Civil War in the first place because I think it's just so messy, and I love mess. And I think what is interesting here is what this clarifies for the French is actually nothing about England. They're just like, gosh, English people are really annoying. Anyway, back at it. I hate. And they don't care. You know, the English are like, we did it. We did it guys. Really show those French or thing or two. And the French people are like, I hate the Burgundian faction. Yeah. And it's, you know, the Armeniacs are essentially focused around the Dofan, the heir to the French crown. And the Burgundians around the Duke of Burgundy. So when the Armaniacs assassinate the Duke of Burgundy, his son and heir, the new Duke of Burgundy is like, well, I know someone who'll be on my side.

Yeah. All it really does is set up this interesting new faction for within the French. And I think that is actually more interesting. I think that that is actually looking at Henry V at this master political player who's really good at getting this quick win who has, it's an impressive victory. It's a very impressive victory. And he's able to propagandize that. That tells me more about Henry V. then talking about Agencourt as this sort of like defining moment. Yeah, because I think that that is the real value of Agincourt. Agincourt doesn't win anything apart from Henry's security in England. What gets Henry back into France, really, is the assassination of the Duke of Burgundy. And the door that that opens for him to offer some sympathy to the Burgundian faction and say, we could get our heads together. We could beat the Arminac together. We could do it. We could do it.

which sees him, you know, go back to France. And certainly the victory at Agincourt allows him to build momentum and to meet much less opposition in France than he would have because there's so much of the French nobility has been either killed or captured. You know, lots of the key French leaders will spend years, if not decades, or the Duke of Aegean will spend 30 years as an English prisoner after Agincourt. So he is now dealing with a significantly weakened enemy. But really it's the...

alliance with the Burgundians that helps him back into France. And I think all of that experience that he can put into place. So the next campaign that he goes on are much more about taking some territory. This is like, this is aimed at conquering Normandy, taking Ruan, the capital of Normandy and actually holding some territory, which is what he's failed to do in 1415. And we do see him go back and be devastatingly successful at that, criticized again as very ruthless at the siege of Ruan. You know, he will, what the people of Rewan, the people of Rewan, one kick out anyone who can't fight. The young and the elderly and the weak.

They assume that the English will let them pass the blockade. And Henry's like, but you're doing that to prolong the siege. And that's not how warfare works. That's not fair. This is from a man who has demonstrated. I cannot with this man and that's not fair. Okay. Yeah.

He's demonstrated he doesn't care about these rules when it suits him not to. But so these people end up spending a winter. up against the outside walls of the city of Ruan, most of them freezing and starving to death. Christmas Day, Henry gives them some food, but that's the extent of his mercy. Which is also interesting when you're sort of prosecuting a war in theory to say, you should let me be your king. And it's like, and what are you going to do about that? I'll starve you. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to starve you. So, can I be the king? It's like, yeah, looking great. People love that, actually.

Absolutely. But, you know, but he does manage to subdue Normandy. He's pretty much in control of Normandy by 1419. This is really building momentum that hasn't been seen since the beginning of Edward III's campaigns, really. And he's taking back land that the English crown hasn't really held for a couple hundred years by this point. So he is being hugely successful. And it culminates really at the Treaty of Tuat in 1422

when Charles I 6th, who is still King of France, he's been there for an incredibly long time. But he's so disgusted at what his son, the Dofan, has done. Charles the 6th has enough about him to realise that his son has royally screwed up in assassinating the Duke of Burgundy. And so all of this culminates at the Treaty of Tuat in 1420 when Charles the 6th kind of disowns and disinherits his own son. Quite right too.

And says Henry can be regent of France for as long as I'm alive. He can marry my daughter, Catherine. And when I die, Henry becomes king of France. And at that point, it looks like the English have done it. They've won the 100 years war. It's done. But only two years later, Henry dies at the age of 35 of drumroll. Dissentry!

It's like, I mean, literally the number one way to die. What a way to go. Like, it is the way, I think probably more English kings have died of dysentery than anything else. Yeah. Certainly then on the battlefield, then of old age, you know, of the plague. It's actually dysentery. Like, dysentery is a hell of a body count. Yeah, yeah.

But it's one of the big what-ifs, isn't it? Henry 35, he dies at the absolute height of his powers. The big question it leaves is could he actually have solidified all of his gain? Could he have made it work? Could he financially have sustained the effort of fighting the rest of the Arming Act faction? Because Charles VI dies, Henry leaves behind a nine-month-old baby to be king of England in Henry the 6th. But Charles A 6th dies a few weeks later as well. I think it really depends on what the Burgundians do.

I think because they are the ones who are bankrolling a lot of this. and they are the ones who are kind of looking at it. And I think that in a very real way, the Burgundians are sort of the kingmakers of Europe at this time. And ultimately it'll lead to kind of just after 1430, Henry the 6th, when he's about 10 years old, is taken over to Paris and crowned as king of France. Which should have been the end of it.

But it's a tricky thing, isn't it? I mean, it's weird that Henry the 6th, as deeply unimpressive as he is as a king, is the only man in history ever to have been crowned king of England and France in both countries. He's crowned in the wrong place though, Gene. That's not where they crown him. You don't crown him in Paris.

No. You don't crown him in Paris. And this is a symptom of the fact that the French are resurgent. And they have him crowned to reinforce his claim to the throne. But what it really does is cause a completely intractable problem. Because now you've crowned him. You can't undo that. There's no going back from that.

And so you've lost that shifting bit of ground, like that thing of having to go and do fealty to the French king. You've lost that bit of play of being able to say, well, I'm king of France really. I could come over there and get crowned if I wanted to, but let's chat about it. Yeah, but they did it wrong. And I do think that that is important. It's like, that's not the, correct place and you didn't have the oil. Yeah. If you don't have the oil of Sandini, if you haven't gone over to get this done in the correct place, like that's part of it, and it's part of the Frenchness. It's the knowing, right? These are a people of legacy. They are people who say there is a certain cultural way we do things. Like there's a cultural reason we've lost

Ashton Corp. Right. Like, and to them, these cultural things matter. So it is, it's interesting that you are able to actually keep this alive despite the treaty, despite the coronation, because they can literally like, well, no, that's what you did it in person? That's weird. Because what's just Joan of Arcte? You know, she goes and relieves allie on and then she literally plows a path to Ream Cathedral. Yeah. Because that's where Charles needs to go to get crowned. Like laser folks. Yeah, she's like, you have to go to, wow. And if you do not get there, then we are all in trouble, right? And she plays a blunder there.

And it's that cultural know-how. It's that religious import. And again, from our standpoint, it doesn't make sense. We say, but there was a treaty and that guy got crowned, but there are these cultural markers. There is this baggage around it that you have to understand or you don't get it, right? There is, you have to have the special oil that's on to knee brought down from God, you know, in order to be the king of France. And you just do. That just is true.

Yeah. And I guess, you know, the legacy of Agincourt goes on. It's a point in the historical map that even people who aren't really interested in history can navigate around. They know Agincourt and they know roughly where it sits. And Shakespeare, you know, by the end of the 16th century, Shakespeare has given us the absolutely legendary Henry V play. Yeah. With all of these talks about, you know, once more into the breach and we band of brothers and all of that patriotic, motivational kind of stuff

that is recycled World War II there's a reason Lawrence Livia is doing a film performance of Henry VIII in World War II because it reminds the English of how they can beat the odds Do you think that that is why

Agincourt has the legacy that it does Is this a Shakespeare thing? I think it probably is I mean we owe him so many things that we probably wouldn't talk about in history otherwise and I do think Agincourt is slightly overstated

in terms of its immediate impact. Yeah. It definitely clears the French nobility out of Henry's way a bit, but they've already demonstrated they're not very effective when they're there anyway, because they can't agree with each other. And it's not the Battle of Agincourt that wins Henry, Ruan, and it's not the Battle of Agincourt that sees him achieve the Treaty of Tuat in 1420. It's not those things.

It's going home, resetting and coming back again with more of a conquest, in mind. And so I think for both the French and the English, Agincourt has an immediate impact, but not that much of a legacy. And the legacy is, I think, something that we kind of have inflated and we sometimes project backwards and we see the glory of the victory of the underdog and that somehow that can lead to monumental change. But I think it's slightly more complicated than that. Yeah, I think this is a real case of us seeing what we want to see. You know, we want these ideas about, you know, patriotism, which, bz, wrong.

No such thing. Like, there's no patria, babe. Like, you know, this isn't the English doing anything for England. You know, this is you supporting your king to make some more money, right? We like a plucky underdog story. And sure, they're massively weakened and there are fewer of them, but like, do I care particularly what these guys who have just, like, invaded another country are not really. but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter culturally. So two things can be true.

It can be different to the way that we speak about it. It can also be that it doesn't make that much of a difference really in the grand scheme of the war, but it does have a cultural importance in the way that we talk about it. And I think that is significant and worth thinking about in and of itself. Yeah. I think if you're a dysentery riddled archer from a farm who survived the Battle of Agincourt, you're dining out on that for. for the rest of your life. Hell yeah. I'd be like, he's just down, down in being like,

who wants to buy me another round and hear about? Ashton Karn, everyone's like, ah, Peter's on it again. Yeah. And I'm realizing now as well that I've just said we massively overstate the importance and the impact of Agincourt and everything else. And I started this episode by going, Agincourt! See? Listen, you know, you are not immune from propaganda, babe. Yeah. I'm falling for it every day. Listen, that's beautiful for you and I'm going to let you have it. I think it's great, actually. Thank you. I'm just going to revel in that for a moment. Thank you for joining us today.

And if you want to hear more about the key events and people around the Battle of Agincourt, we have episodes on all of this, including Queen Isabella, the She-Wolf of France, and Henry V's campaigns after Ashencourt. You can find those links in the show notes to this episode. And if you want even more history, you can watch our new film Medieval Summer on History Hit. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week, as well as early access to our favorite podcasts. Ad free.

You can sign up at www. HistoryHit.com for slash subscription.