In Our Time - Agincourt

Episode Date: September 16, 2004

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Battle of Agincourt."Owre kynge went forth to Normandy, With grace and myyt of chivalry; The God for hym wrouyt marvelously, Wherefore Englonde may calle, and cry Deo gratias: Deo gratias redde pro victoria." The great victory was Agincourt as described in the Agincourt Carol, when the 'happy few' of the English army of King Henry V vanquished the French forces on St Crispin's Day 1415. It is a battle that has resounded through the centuries and has been used by so many to mean so much. But how important was the battle in the strategic struggles of the time? What were the pressures at home that drove Henry's march through France? And what is the cultural legacy of Agincourt? With Anne Curry, Professor of Medieval History at Southampton University; Michael Jones, medieval historian and writer; John Watts, Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Corpus Christie College, Oxford.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, our king went forth to Normandy with grace and might of chivalry. The god for him wrought marvellously, whereof England may call and cry,

deo gratius, deo gratius, re de pro-victoria. It's not Shakespeare, though he was soon to go into the breach. The great victory was Agincourt, as described there in the Agincourt Carroll, when the happy few of Henry V's English army vanquished the numerically superior French forces on St. Crispin's Day in 1415. It's a battle that has resounded through the centuries and been used by so many to mean so much, not least what it is to be English. But how important was the battle in the strategic struggles of the time? What were the pressures at home that drove Henry's march through France?

and what is the legacy of Agincourt? With me to discuss the Battle of Agincourt is Anne Currie, Professor of Medieval History at Southampton University, John Watts, fellow and tutor in modern history at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and the medieval historian and writer Michael Jones. Anne Currie, can we look at the deep background first? We're talking about 1415. We're talking about the battle in France,

but without being silly about it, it does go back to 1066, when William of Normandy came over, and the many great aristocratic families had holdings in England, and France, including the king himself, of course. And so there were pretexts from then on for going backwards and forwards. Yeah, I think that's a very important point to bear in mind. William was Duke of Normandy, so when he became King of England, he united the Duchy of Normandy and the Kingdom of England.

From that point onwards, English kings continued to hold lands in France. It actually got more because when Henry II became King of England in 1154, he was also Count of Anjou and Maine, and through his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Controlled Aquitaine and Poitou. So in the late 12th century, actually the English kings held more lands in France than the French kings, who were very much holed up around Paris in Eel de France. And there's a sense in which, although we're brush-stroking decades, and there's a frown quite rightly going on about...

Absolutely. There's a sense in which while the two places were held together by a common ruler, that worked. it was after 1204 when England, as we might call it, and France, as we might call it, which weren't quite like that at the time, began to split that the trouble set in. Yeah, I think you've got to bear in mind my previous point. The French kings, as they became more powerful,

didn't like this English king holding lands, even though he probably didn't see him as an English king, very much as a sort of French prince. But when John lost Normandy in 1204, and that was very much because the French exploited feudal custom to deprive the Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine of his lands. After that point, the English tried to get Normandy back,

and other parts of their provinces, they were unable to do so, so they were left only with a part of Aquitaine, the bit that we normally call Gascony, the bit people like to go on holiday to around Bordeaux and Bayonne now Bia Ritz. And that was important for us because of the wine trade, but it was nothing like that great Anjavine Empire, and most importantly, we'd lost Normandy, the bit that had been held for the longest.

But there's still bits there that English-Irishocrats personally can climb, that kings can claim them being, though they're being out to, most notably Edward III, who put himself up and proposed himself as a king of France when the French were in trouble finding a king, with a fairly decent claim. Yeah, I mean, there'd been wars on and off after 1204, and even though a treaty had been come to in 1259,

by which the English had said, OK, fair cop, we give up our northern lands so long as we can keep Aquitaine, and we'll pay homage to the French king for Aquitaine. There was a war under Edward I, the first, a war undered of the second, and a kind of cold war situation existed between the two kings. But the claim to the throne is a new element,

and that's what really makes the 14th and 15th century so interesting. You're right, Edward III claimed the throne because he was the nephew of the last king of France, the last of the legitimate male line, but the French preferred a cousin of the last king because then the inheritance was entirely through the male line. Edward's claim was through his mother. and that was a weakness for him.

Michael Jones, what were the circumstances which led Henry to, as it were, revive Edward III's claim to France? Well, we need to remember that Henry's father, Henry IV, had usurped the throne in 1399. He'd taken the throne by force and he'd deposed the anointed king, Richard II. And Richard II was subsequently murdered on Henry's orders. This was not an auspicious start,

for a new dynasty, and it led to bitter civil war, and also a very, very dangerous revolt in Wales under Owen Gondor. So young Prince Henry's upbringing was a civil war upbringing, and his first battle, the Battle of Shrewsbury, where he fought as a 16-year-old with considerable courage, was a battle where contemporaries were shocked by the devastating casualties inflicted by an English army against another English army. So his upbringing and his political experience is the devastation of civil war and he's looking to move out of that

and unite the nation with a very, very different vision. Can we go back to usurping the throne for a moment, please, Michael? This is a big matter, isn't it? You're not legitimate. You're not appointed by God in the natural succession. So this is a serious matter. It's also an excuse and so forth, but it's a serious matter.

It is a serious matter. And when Henry IV falls ill in 1406, and we'd think he probably suffered from leprosy, many contemporaries were saying, aha, and that's divine judgment for the way you took the throne, you took the throne by force, and God's judging you for that. That's the consequence of your action.

And it's very, very interesting that when Henry V takes the throne, one of his first actions is a very important, re-burial of that deposed King Richard II in Westminster Abbey. In other words, Henry is almost, I think, recognising that the seriousness of that and saying, okay, let's move on. And when you mentioned the boldness of him as a fight area at the age of 16, the idea that we've got from Shakespeare, of most of us, however, being a wild, untamed, roistering youth is largely borne out from what we know.

Yes, I'm rather delighted. by the fact that Prince Henry could combine both being a vigorous brave soldier and administrator had a bit of time for roistering as well. Though when he took the throne, he very definitely put that behind him. But I think one of the qualities of Henry as king is that while sort of bringing together his sense of vision and purpose, he knows what it's like to talk to the ordinary man. He can understand the ordinary man in the street. and he has a brilliant way of addressing ordinary people

that makes them feel included, not condescended to. Yes, we'll come to that in the letters later. But there was also a time. I'm going to move on to you in a moment, John, but just stay with you for a second, Michael. It was also a time when Englishness was reappearing quite forcefully. The Normans, of course, by breaking away from France, had broken their power base.

Norman French was being taken over by the newly re-emerged English language, which are so so there. Parliament, they're very proud of Parliament, and that's all the thing. Now, did Henry sense that and take advantage of it, Michael, or was he borne up by that tide? I think the answer is a bit of both.

One of the things that makes Henry stand out is his skill in putting his case forward and using the English language to do so. And he does it in a way that's astute, but it is also not affected. It comes across as very genuine. And he uses the English language when he's addressing the community of the realm, towns, his nobleman, and also has a way of using English very directly when he's talking to ordinary people as well.

So he certainly takes this up. And that feeling of Englishness and being English was built around the language, which he was very astute about, isn't it? Yes. I think he does sense the mood of the time. But I also think he brings something to it, that one of his instinctive skills as a politician is that he is a nation builder. So he picks up on these things that are around, but not only brings them forward, but fashions them into something.

And that's one of his superb intuitive skills. Michael Jones, can we, John, sorry, John, can we take this on? Can we say, did it actually, when he got his army together, Was he exploiting the national mood then in the way he brought the army together? Because it was a rather unusual way to bring an army together to that time, wasn't it? I'm not sure that it was particularly unusual. I thought the way the tax people to sort of support the army through a form of taxation. That's right.

I mean, England has a national army which is funded through taxation, though it's raised through the personal connections often of the nobility and the royal household and so on. So it's a mixture of personal contacts and public funding. And Henry, of course, needs to make a case to Parliament for his war in order to justify the taxation which will pay for the army. But I think Michael's very much put his finger on something by saying that Henry has built an atmosphere of national unity and national energy in the early part of his reign.

And that energy is clearly carried forward onto the battlefields of France. What's the headlines of the case he makes to Parliament for this war? Well, the case that he makes is that his just rights as king have been withheld from him in France. And that's a textbook, just law, a just war case. He has to establish in terms of international law that his war is a just one. And the just war has to be announced by a just authority. It has to be fought for a just cause and in defense of a just cause and so on. And these things are all rather important because if you don't fight a just war, your troops are vulnerable.

They're dishonoured by the fact they're participating in a war that can't be justified. You can't easily negotiate a truce and so on. But what is... And it's one Christian nation and another. This is the Christian idea from Augustine to Aquinas. That's right. They're going to attack each other. They must attack each other for reasons which are a just war.

And it's just as important in the thinking of the time as a king being a usurper, therefore not wholly legitimate. but Henry's struggle to be in so many ways legitimate. Yes. It's a Christian principle, and it's also a legal principle, because war is the ultimate vindication of justice. I mean, I think we see justice as a domestic matter and war as an external matter. I think for the people of this time,

justice runs through into war, and a king who won't vindicate his proper rights on the battlefield can't be relied upon to uphold the rights of his subjects at home either. But who judges whether it's a just war? I mean, does he say, these are my proofs, and Parliament says, Yes, and that's it. Or does it refer elsewhere?

It's referred to higher authorities in the church and so on. Yes, I think he's making a case that he can rely on later, though Henry does, in fact, send a copy of the Treaty of Bourge off to the Council of Constance, the International Church Council, which is meeting. And that treaty had the signatures of French nobleman agreeing that the king had rights to lands in France. So he was able to show international clerical opinion

that he had been directly let down by the first. French. So when they meet at Southampton, they're about to go off on a just war, they have put the, they've got the taxation to raise the army. How big was the army? Do we, I know that the fingers are going to play quite a big part in this discussion later, but that army then, Anne, what is it estimated to be? I've been able to do a lot of research in the public record office, largely in financial records and I think about 12,000 men. Would that be considered a big army at the time? Yes, it is a big army. In fact, it's bigger than any army of the 14th century. I think It's probably bigger than the one at the Siege of Calais in 1347,

and it's not really matched again until, well, two years later, Henry raises another 12,000 in 1417. Otherwise, it's not raised again until much later in the 15th, early 16th centuries. And can you tell us how it breaks down? About 25% of it are men at arms. Men at arms are aristocrats? No, not entirely. I mean, clearly the earls and the dukes did fight as men at arms,

so did the king himself. They are anybody, really, who has the gear. You need a full set of armour, you need a horse, not just to fight on, but to get there. And you'll paid a shilling a day if you're a standard man-at-arms, perhaps an esquire or a knight would be paid two shillings. The dukes get paid 13 and 4 pence a day. So the pay is based not so much on the way you fight,

but on your social status. But the remaining 75% are archers. And that's actually rather clever. Henry's able to get a big army together by increasing the proportion of archers in his army. Michael mentioned 1406 earlier. I've been able to show that it's at that point onwards in the Welsh wars that this idea of having one man at arms to three archers

becomes common practice, and it remains common practice all the way through to 1450. Arches is a French word, isn't it? So they would have used the word bowmen, wouldn't they? Actually, they called them valetis, yeoman in Latin. In fact, sometimes the muster rolls would indicate esquires or gentlemen for the men-at-arms as a collective group and valetie valetio-man for the archers.

So just as a final question about the composition of this army, 25% men-at-arms on horses in armour and 75% bowmen or archers or valetie. This is not unusual then. This is a composition. He isn't seeing something that other people are not seeing. You're demurring here a little bit more. Well, this is a very, very important exercise.

and it's a high status campaign. And although we're seeing this change in military practice where more arches are coming in, there's a big risk on such a high-profile expedition, having such a high proportion of arches. But at the same time, there are good military reasons for it. And if Henry combine this army together, it'll be a formidable force.

But he needs to make it work as a unit. But also it's a lot cheaper because archers are only six pence a day, as a man at times it's twice as costly. You can have more archers for the same amount of money. There was a plot, supposedly a plot at Southampton before they set off. There are some forced confessions, as we think. Need that delay, or is it of any great significance? John?

Hard to say, really. No. I mean, I think this is more or less a throwback. These people are very unrepresentative in a sense. And the person who's the chief intended beneficiary of the plot, the Earl of March, is the person who reveals it to the king. And one of the things that's interesting about the Southampton plot as also about the so-called Oldcastle revolt of earlier in the reign, the rising of a group of supposed heretics against the king,

is the way in which these things are dramatized in Lancasterian propaganda to make it look as if the king is having to struggle against all these difficulties. I think we're going to be talking quite a lot about the way in which the war is publicised. Yes, indeed. Anyway, there they are sometimes off they sit and they go for our fleur. Why do they do that? What are they getting there, John Watts? Well, I think possibly two things. One is that the English had conventionally sought landing places on the northern French coast anyway.

This has been quite a traditional posture of English armies in the 14th century. They've controlled Sherborg, for example, and Brest for a period of time, as well as Calais that had been triumphantly won by Edward III. So I think there's a desire to secure a bridgehead. Halfleur is also a base for Norman piracy against English shipping, so there's a certain amount of kudos to be won in putting a stop to that. But perhaps more excitingly than both of these reasons is it's Henry staking a very clear claim to be Duke of Normandy, which is something he's been posturing towards in 1413 and 1414.

If he lands at Calais and sets off down towards Normandy, all he's going to do is intimidate his not altogether reliant. the Duke of Burgundy, but if he lands at Halfler and conquers it, he begins a conquest of Normandy, which makes him much more of a player in French politics. What made Halfler hard to lay siege to? It was not an easy place to attack, was it? No, it was very strong. It was very, very well fortified, and it also has a system of water defences. It's on a small river, the Lazard, that runs into the tidal estuary of the same, so the defenders can use water defences.

They very astutely flood the valley around the town, and this creates a lot of difficulties for the English, and it's got very strong fortifications. It must have looked quite a stunning sight for the ordinary English soldier when they turned up and saw it. Was Henry's use of cannon there particularly, we have to try to define in this programme, how good he was as a leader and as a military man,

because that's part of the, either reality, certainly part of the myth. Was his use of cannon there, which I've read about, was it particularly cleverly done? Well, I think it was, and a lot of people say of this siege, well, it drags on rather a long time, as if Henry sort of lost the direction of the military operation. And I see this as an exceptionally well-conducted siege. I think Henry, one of the reasons that he was choosing a tough target was he wanted to try out his artillery.

He was very interested in artillery. And he does a number of things. He cites it very well. He's got a clear idea of where he wants to affect that famous breach in the wall, and it's going to be on the west side, and that's where he concentrates his guns. But he doesn't just concentrate them.

He takes a lot of care in defending them, getting them close in the trenches and the defenses that will mean the French will find it very difficult to attack those gun emplacements. and we're told that he takes care of all this personally. He's there day and night sharing in the dangers and making sure that the guns are in the right places.

So when they finally start to fire, they're in the right place and they deliver a very effective series of blows against the walls. It's six weeks about the siege, isn't it? And then they go in. What do they find in? Well, they go in really because the French don't send a relieving army. It's a negotiated settlement.

it's not taken by assault, they go in to discover a rather depressed population because the king hasn't come to rescue them. And also, when Michael said about the use of the guns, we mustn't forget that inside the town they'd actually tried measures against the guns. They'd filled streets with sand, they'd mounted their own gun attacks, that kind of thing. They were probably running short of food to a certain degree, so I think they're feeling pretty depressed. Also, there's quite a bit of evidence that Henry,

He expels some of the population because he was going to turn it into a war base, rather like Calais. So he drives out the women and the elderly and the defenders of the city obviously are allowed out as well. We've put to move on to Agincourt, but just one massive thing that happened there, John Watts, is that we're told there's a huge outbreak of dysentery. And numbers, again, it's useful to talk about numbers, say we've got about 12,000.

Considerable numbers were laid low by that. Yes, and the group that Henry takes off towards Agincourt probably amounts to, I think, 5,000 archers and 900 men at arms. I think more than that. I think probably about 7.5,000 to 8,000 men. Oh, right. So it's played down in some of the chronicles. Well, he put 1,200 into garrison at half flur and possibly another 2,000 went home or died.

So I think he's got many more. into the garage and that takes it down to 10,800. And then he put 2,000 went home or that's about 8,000. So about 8,000. About 8,000. So 8,000, and then he decides to strike a cross-country. Now, what's that all about? Well, I think we have to accept that we don't really know why Henry does this.

I mean, it may be that he can't get back from Half-Flur. We don't know if the ships are still there to take him home. My view, I think, would be that he is actually looking for a battle and that he's to some extent wanting to repeat the great march that's carried out by Edward III of blessed memory, as it were, which of course culminates in a battle at Cressy, which is not all that far from Agincourt, where Henry fights.

So I think there's a degree of historical reconstruction here, though Henry is also signaling to the Normans that he's here, the Duke of Normandy has returned and so on, and then if you're going to attract the French to battle, you have to make yourself vulnerable, You have to put yourself out there. They're not going to come and attack you in half-flare where you're nice and safe. And it's in Henry's interest to return to England, ideally with a battle one, rather than just one town.

What evidence do you have that he did go out looking for a battle? I have no evidence, except that this resembles the practice of previous military leaders, and that one understands a certain amount about battle psychology, which is all about flirting, in a sense, with the enemy and making yourself look attackable. He had issued a summons at Half Lur to the Dofant to meet him in single combat, so I think that probably was a summons to battle generally. Michael Jones, the French then from Saint-Denig got out one of their great sacred relics, the Oriflam.

Can you tell us what the significance of that was and what the consequence of that was in France at the time? Yes, well, this is one of the magnificent trophies. It was an incredible red banner, the banner of war. and it was kept in great reverence in the Abbey of San Deney, and it was believed that this was not only a token of good fortune, but also it's a sign of determination. And in Shevaric, the law of arms,

it's a sign of no court given or taken. I don't mean we should take that absolutely, literally, but certainly it's a gesture of defiance, determination, and resolution. And I think that's needed, because, We've got a distinct leadership problem on the French side. We've talked about Henry V. We haven't really mentioned what's happening on the French side. And this is very relevant because the King of France, Charles VI,

had suffered a mental collapse in 1392. And since then, he suffered periodic bouts of insanity where he suffered from the delusion that he was made of glass and needed to be bound in with wooden hoops, not good qualities for leading a fighting campaign against the English. there's a worrying resonance here for us because when he was suffering from insanity he refused to be called Charles

but said his name was George instead. So that leaves us with the Dofair, who Anne has mentioned. And this summons to the Dofai is definitely a statement of aggressive intent. But he's also injecting a bit of humour here. And this is an example of Henry's common touch. The Dofan was an 18-year-old corpulent youth

whose daily regimen consisted of getting up about four in the afternoon and banqueting and feasting. And he was so unfit that on a trip within Paris, he actually kind of collapsed of exhaustion. So Henra is reminding people that there's a lack of leadership. So the Oriflam is really an appeal to the broader French community. Well, it certainly brings a great number of Frenchmen from many parts of Francemenos together to fight this battle.

And then we have the curious, for me, very curious, circumstance where the French get ahead of the English. And so the English are actually following a gathering French army across country. And the French are trying to obviously delay them all the way. And English are finding it difficult to get across

rivers and that sort of thing. So it is very, very odd that they're following them. And the French presumably are looking for a place to settle and to choose the ground, which is one, as I understand it from what you've written and others written, is one of the great things in medieval about if you get to

choose the ground and they did. Now can we talk about the ground they chose? Would you like to talk about John and why they thought it was good for them? Actually I'll hand over to Michael Oran who really know more about this. I think it's important that it's near Calais. I think what they were after

was cutting him off near Calais and then going on to take Calais later on and that's why they hang on for as long as possible. Adjincourt isn't all that far. It's about an hour's drive nowadays so that was why they waited until then. so he's getting weaker and weaker, shorter of food,

and presumably his army was pretty depressed on October the 24th the night before, when they saw how many French were there? Right, but why do French choose this ground? Because a lot of mileage has come out of the fact that the ground was not very good for them and proved to be really terribly very bad, yet they chose it. When they chose it, did they think its qualities were, Michael? Yes, one of the problems in our accounts of Agincourt is we end up with this caricature, that either the French are incredibly overconfident

or incredibly stupid or both. And the plucky English are fighting on this extraordinarily advantageous site. Now, once Henry is able to cross this great river barrier of the Somme, and we must remember that the French had forced him further and further inland by holding the bridging point. So as Anne has said, the army has got more, more tired and demoralised. They then have the option of blocking his army on the Calais Road, on his route back, at a place of their choosing.

And we know they had an initial battle plan. English were holding Calais at the time, and it was a fortified place of refuge. That's right. That was where Henry was aiming for. That was where he was trying to get back to. So the French needed to block him on that route. And the choice is really whether they go for an all-out aggressive strategy, and that was their Plan A.

They had an original battle plan drawn up by some very good commanders, including the Marshal Busiko, who was very highly rated. He had international renown in terms of his military skill. Plan A, an aggressive plan, was to tackle the archers head on by using cavalry on the wings to weaken the main body of English men at arms with a missile attack, that's from crossbowmen and some bowmen, and then to use the full force of the main army on foot to smash through the English line. Now, Plan A really needed open countryside, and of course, the final battlefield wasn't open.

But I think the reason for that is there's been a change of plan within the French Army. They've moved from the aggressive Plan A to an equally astute plan B, which is to block the route with these woods on either side, on either side of the road, and wait for the English to attack them. Of course, one of the reasons maybe that the English captured the battle plan, because that's what the stakes are all about. If the archers put stakes in front of them, the French wouldn't have been able to carry out this plant as well.

When you say they capture the battlebank, do the English get hold of the French battle plan? It seems so, yes, yes, because it's now in English archives. And also the defence of the archers must be related to the anticipation that the French would try to launch a special attack against them. So that was a successive intelligence, yeah? I think there's a lot of intelligence in evidence.

They tried to cross whereed at the third of... across the Somme at Blanchetac, but they knew that the French were there already, so they moved further along the Somme. It's quite a lot of evidence of them sending out scouts, viewing the French army from the heights above things of this sort. I think we miss out quite a lot of this military intelligence sometimes. Yes. What's your view of the way that the English then set up their battle formation, John? Well, they create.

The stakes that Anne's talked about, just so listeners know exactly what they're saying. Henry instructed the bowmen, the archers, to take a stake sharpened at both ends, six foot long, just put into the ground to surround them with a sort of blockade, really, wasn't it? Absolutely, yes, and obviously that would break up any incoming cavalry charge. And the archers are sensibly positioned in a sort of a U-shaped so that as the French come forward, they can be hit straight on and also from the sides. And, of course, the tragedy of the battle for the French

is that as their massive army moves forward, so it becomes narrowed and narrowed and narrowed in the gulfs, Of course the trees don't help at the end of the day because the archers are probably hidden by the trees. The French don't realise how many they are against them. The English were also helped at that time, but the fact they're very wet and the ground cell, but we just miss one little step.

As the way you were saying it, and Michael was saying, the first advantage in medieval war is to choose the ground, which they did, and the plan got changed. The second is to be attacked, because defence is preferable in those sort of... But somehow or rather the English provoked a French to attack, or the French became impatient or they're overconfident. Why do you think the French attacked?

Oh, gosh. Well, I mean, partly a matter of honour. I mean, one thing that's very striking from the 14th century phase of the Hundred Years' War is that it eventually becomes impossible to avoid attacking the English because their presence is such an insult. And we know that Henry has a great big gold crown

that he's wearing on this battlefield, a sort of goading the French to attack. We're flutterly on it, yeah. Right. And Henry's army advanced is a certain point, as it were, to get quite close to, within arrow and crossbow range of the French army, to sort of tempt them forward. And also, okay, the French are in the middle of a civil war, but part of being in a civil war is proving that you are the best defenders of France, as it were.

So they're struggling with each other to put up the most honourable and chivalrous performance. One of the texts tells us they're actually fighting amongst each other for who should be in the front row to smash it, and particularly to capture Henry, that's what they were after. I think the crucial thing here is that the French have not got an integrated system of command. And that one of the drawbacks to getting all these extra people ready to fight, but they're all coming in at the last moment, is that the command system breaks down. You've got a lot of aristocrats of the royal blood now turning up.

It's very, very difficult to decide on a clear command structure. And the great ace for the English army is that they've got a strong, leader, Henry V, clear, decisive arrangements for conveying his orders. And Henry knows that if he can provoke a situation that moves from the initial disposition of the French army, they will rapidly lose shape or cohesion once something starts to go wrong. So this is what he's aiming for. He's aiming to provoke the French. We can speed up a bit if we don't mind. Now let's get back to numbers. There's been an awful lot of talk about the English being massively out-known.

We think there are about 8,000-ish English soldiers there, one sort of a. How many French do you think there were, Anne? Well, French historians are increasingly thinking there weren't many more, and in fact possibly fewer, but that's quite interesting. Obviously, English texts of the 15th century come out with ridiculous numbers, 60,000, 100,000, whatever. I think it's hard to believe there were many more than about 15,000 there, but it's still a virtual two-to-one situation. But I think Michael's got a very valid point.

they're thrown together at the last minute. And whilst it's great that they got people from the Auverne there, how well integrated were they with the forces as a whole? Can I come back to your figures? Are these figures you've arrived at, and do they surprise other people? Because I've heard figures ranging from 15,000 to 60,000, but the one that was settled on before you came up 15, it was about 25,000. The problem is we don't know.

We just don't have the same kind of sources. That in itself is indicative of the state the French were in, both before and after the battle, I think. We just don't have the administrative record. So we rely on chronicle accounts, but those really are very unreliable indeed. Can we talk about the longbow for a second? Why was it so effective? Why did it play such a big part?

Michael? Well, this is the high-quality weapon that the English are putting into the frame, and it's internationally recognized at this stage. And we even have the Knights of the Teutonic order, and that's the highest kind of chivalric group you can get, looking out for English bowmen because they recognize its strength. The bow has range, it has

speed. It's between seven feet and ten feet long the bow itself. Well, I'll put it around six feet, yes. Its firing range is much greater than the crossbow, and by using special kinds of arrows and arrow heads, some penetration of armour can be achieved, particularly

in what we call the killing range, the last perhaps 30 to 40 yards. But even before that range is reached, the arrow storm can inflict body wounds and it can bring down horses. The thing is it can be reloaded very quickly and I think that's the key to it and you can fire off a very, very large number within a minute whereas a crossbow takes

ages to reload so these archers could fire off a hail storm of arrows as one of the chroniclers tells us. Let's talk about the legacy the battle was very decisively won in quite a short time the battle lasted for a number of hours, maybe as... Three hours, perhaps even less. And one of the things about it was decisively won. And then Henry came back to a great welcome. How did he, John, how did he capitalise?

When he came back from the battle, from Agincourt, from Aflo and Hangar, how did he, we knew he wrote his letters home in English, and he asked them to be read out in the shires by the magistrates to keep the people informed and bring them around him. When he came back, was it recognized with his crown still on from the battle? Would it recognise by him and by others that this had been a great victory, a famous victory? Oh, absolutely. And no opportunity is missed to spin the victory as well, great as it clearly is in itself.

And the king heads on a sort of slow procession through Kent to rest at his royal manner of Eltham, while the Londoners hastily prepare a suitable pageant to mark his arrival. As you're called Carol. Absolutely. Try and find 40 virgins to sing it. Indeed. I mean, everything we know about these London pageants suggests that there's dialogue going on between the government and the London that's about what would be a suitable way of welcoming the king.

And he comes into London and is greeted by a couple of giants, which immediately present him as David struggling against Goliath. And really that's just the beginning. I mean, as he moves into the city, the senses of Henry as Christ entering Jerusalem, he's clad in a simple purple robe, 12 angels sing to welcome him, 12 English king. kings welcome him home in triumphs. A tremendous... It's God's victory as well, and that's the point he's trying to make.

I was interested, we also rather, David and Goliath. At that time, whatever later research would find... There was a strong feeling for people who come back that they had been very, very heavily outnumbered. Yeah, because the point is that they bring home loads of French prisoners, and so it'll be pretty obvious to people, you know, just how important the battle was. But it's interesting point to know whether those who fought

would have been able to tell how many were there. I don't think we're very good at guessing how many. how many are in crowds. So I think they were bound to say that the odds against them were great. I think a key point here is that the way this victory is won, the English have a very small number of casualties, perhaps 100, 200 at the most. And the French slain between 5 and 10,000

and then all these impressive prisoners being paraded back. And this extraordinary disparity between English losses and French losses bring something miraculous into the equation, and of course Henry can very effectively exploit us. He even sends lists of important French dead and prisoners around the shires. It's a very significant propaganda. Parliament meets just before he comes back and votes another tax immediately, so this is really good stuff.

That's customs for life. Absolutely, and also it means he can go to war against the French in the future. And he died a few years later, oddly of dysentery himself, in 40. By the time he died, he'd gone back to France, it put himself in the position of being the heir to the French throne, as well as he'd astounded, had he lived, I mean, there's alternative history or something, had he lived, he could have been king of France and England. Would that have been a real possibility?

I think there were real problems with the idea of trying to be king of two countries, and particularly with the terms on which Henry comes to an agreement with the French, namely that he will preserve the crown of France intact. On the other hand, I think had Henry been able to wriggle out of that, the English maintaining a significant foothold in France, perhaps in Normandy and in Gascany, and through a mixture of military activity and diplomacy, being able to hang on to those seems to me to be quite plausible.

And I think there could be a very different map of France emerging from the 15th century than the one that we're used to. I'd agree. I mean, had he lived, that would have been fine, but he was succeeded by a nine-month-old baby, and that baby wasn't going to be able to lead an army for really quite a long time to come. Did Agincourt begin to push itself towards the central point in English mythical history, as well as strategic history, as well as military history, from the very beginning?

Oh, yes. I think so. From the time after it was fought. Just picking up actually some of the comments that Anne made earlier about the unreliability of the chronicle sources, these are already dramatizing, Ashencourt, of a struggle of the few just against the many unjust, as it were, something that we've seen has got Christian connotations. It's also got connotations of justice and so on. It's interesting that the numbers in the English army are played down.

The portrait of this army hungry, tired and exhausted with its inspiring leader who dashes hither and thither building up morale is straight out of the pages of Vigius. This is absolute textbook. It's interesting that the chronicler at St. Albans, Thomas Walsingham, when he writes his account of the battle, he just inserts lots of quotes from classical texts. So there's already the linking of Henry to the past. Judas Maccabias is linked to him in other texts.

Alexander. So this linking of Henry to the greats of the past, I think, is a very important way in which the victory is celebrated. There's a poem written in his praise which was presented to him. Has Aristotle represented the poet to something to Alexander the Great, isn't it? Yes, the regiment of princess. Yes, yes, absolutely. So I think it enhances his reputation about what Michael said near the beginning. And it really makes him secure on the throne, I mean, so secure that he is able to raise another large army that he's able to have the emperor across the next year and make him a knight of the garter.

And when the emperor goes home, his entourage allegedly dropped little bits of paper from their sleeves saying how wonderful it was to have been in England. You know, it really puts Henry and England on the international map for the first time. And it never, it stays very strongly in the literature, doesn't it? Shakespeare is coming along 100, let's say, almost 200 years later just for the sake of getting a bit of move on.

And he's going straight for Henry V. in the expectation from the directness of that approach that the audience is going to be with him all the way, not only with the drama, great dramatist, but because the story is their story and he's bringing them into it. The story is their story, and let's remember that this was seen as a triumph

of the ordinary Englishmen. There were so many of the ordinary arches there, and they did over all these, you know, the high-faluting French chivalry, and this plays well to a popular gallery. And when Shakespeare brings his Henry VIII out, of course, there's another, invasion of France going on the Earl of Essex is taking an army into France, into Normandy, in 1592.

And that's nicely echoed, of course, in that the encouragement from Churchill to Olivier to do the film version has D-Day very much in mind. And again, it's evoking this wartime spirit, and this is the timeless echo. It was dedicated to the airborne forces, but interestingly, they missed the Southampton plot out of the Olivier, film because they didn't want it to look as though there was anybody who deposed the war. I think the film was released in 1945, made in 44, made in Ireland, I believe. Whereas Shakespeare himself, I think,

does pick up something of this concern with PR that we've been referring to at many points. And Shakespeare's Henry is quite a Machiavell, as it's very clear if you see the Henry the Fourth plays before the Henry the Fifth one. Well, thank you all very much. Thanks, thanks, Anne Currie, John Watson, and Michael Jones. Next week, finally, we'll be discussing the origins of life.

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