The Rest Is History - 489. Hundred Years' War: Bloodbath at Agincourt (Part 3)

Episode Date: September 1, 2024

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”. The Battle of Agincourt in 1415 endures as perhaps the most totemic battle in the whole of English history. Thanks in part to Shakespeare’s masterful Henry V, the myths and legends of that bloody day echo across time, forever enshrining the young Henry as the greatest warrior king England had ever known. So too the enduring idea of the English as plucky underdogs, facing down unfavourable odds with brazen grit. And though the exact numbers of men who fought in the two armies is hotly contested, the prospect was certainly intimidating for the English host looking down upon the vast French force amassed below them the day before the battle. Hungry and weary after an unexpectedly long march, and demoralised by the number of French that would be taking to the field, the situation certainly seemed dire for the English. One man amongst them, however, held true to his belief that the day could still be won: Henry V. An undeniably brilliant military commander, he infused his men with a sense of patriotic mission, convincing them that theirs was truly a divinely ordained task, and therefore in this - and his careful strategic planning the night before the battle - he proves a striking case of one individual changing the course of history. However, the French too had plans in place for the day ahead: total warfare. In other words, to overwhelm the English in a single devastating moment of impact, sweeping the lethal Welsh archers aside. So it was that dawn broke on the 25th of October to the site of King Henry wearing a helmet surmounted by a glittering crown and bearing the emblems of both France and England, astride his little grey horse, and riding up and down his lines of weathered silver clad men, preparing them to stride into legend…then, as the French cavalry began their charge, the sky went black as 75,000 arrows blocked out the sun. What else would that apocalyptic day hold in store? Join Tom and Dominic as they describe the epochal Battle of Agincourt. From the days building up to it, to the moment that the two armies shattered together in the rain and mud of France. It is a story of courage and cowardice, kings and peasants, blood and bowels, tragedy and triumph.  _______ *The Rest Is History LIVE in the U.S.A.* If you live in the States, we've got some great news: Tom and Dominic will be performing throughout America in November, with shows in San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Boston and New York.  *The Rest Is History LIVE at the Royal Albert Hall* Tom and Dominic, accompanied by a live orchestra, take a deep dive into the lives and times of two of history’s greatest composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. Tickets on sale now at TheRestIsHistory.com _______ Twitter: @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Assistant Producer: Tabby Syrett Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. This story shall the good man teach his son, and Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by from this day to the ending of the world, but we in it shall be remembered, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers,

for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother. Be he ne'er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition, and gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whilst any speaks that fought with us upon St Crispin's Day. That is stirring stuff, Tom. It's the most famous speech on a battlefield ever written. One of the most famous speeches in English history, or in English literary history anyway. It's Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt.

I know you love the Kenneth Branagh version. You've been watching it on a loop on YouTube to inspire yourself for today's episode on Agincourt. I know you love the Kenneth Branagh version. You've been watching it on a loop on YouTube to inspire yourself for today's episode on Agincourt. Branagh does it brilliantly, doesn't he? He does it with a kind of rising lilt. He does. And his production, I remember at the time, his production was seen as a groundbreaking, a film version, because it broke with the sort of technicolor, slightly manicured look of Olivier's Henry V. And he was down in the mud, wasn't he? A soldier among soldiers. Yeah, so Olivier's one was very deliberately done as being patriotic. It was made in 1944. All the awkward bits in Shakespeare's play that

makes Henry V as a hero slightly ambivalent were cut. And Branagh's, as you say, I mean, there's lots of mud, there's lots of rain which is very authentic to the actual battle but in that speech he really goes in hard it's absolutely thrilling and you know we've talked about this before it's undoubtedly the reason why agincourt blazes in the imagination of the english perhaps more brightly than any other victory won by an English army. Yeah, I think that's true. But it's not just down to Shakespeare. So it's clear right from the beginning, long before Shakespeare, that the English do see Agincourt as being exceptional in a way that

neither Cressy nor Poitier had been. And in Henry V, that great speech, which you read so powerfully, Dominic, is prompted by a lament from one of Henry's peers from Westmoreland that they're terribly outnumbered. So Westmoreland, he's looking out at the French and he says, oh, that we now had here but one 10,000 of those men in England that do no work today. And Henry replies, I pray thee, wish not one man more. If we die, that's, you know, we don't want any more. And if we win, then the glory is all the greater. And the thing is that Shakespeare is not making this up. So this is reported by the chaplain, who is one of the two combatants on the English side who have written accounts of Agincourt. And the chaplain

reports a knight as making the same complaint that Westmoreland makes in Shakespeare's play. And Henry's retort, according to his chaplain, is, I would not, even if I could, have a single man more than I do. But there's a slightly different kind of emphasis in Henry's words, as reported by the chaplain. Because Henry says, do you not believe that the almighty, with these his humble few, is able to overcome the opposing arrogance of the French who boast of their great number and their own strength? So the emphasis there is on the idea that the victory proves God's backing for Henry.

And this is clearly hugely important to Henry because the battle for him is a kind of test. He's putting his claim to the French throne in the balance. And isn't it interesting how those themes that are hit both by the chaplain's account and by Shakespeare, they resonate so deeply in English history. The idea of the humble few against a massively superior army, the arrogance of the French, all of that kind of thing. I mean, you've got the band of brothers that we mentioned before that Nelson was inspired by, the idea of the few that obviously,

you know, Churchill and whatnot played with in the Second World War. But at the time, I guess that also reflects a wider political, geographical reality that France is much larger, economically more powerful, has far greater manpower than England. So the English, the sense of themselves as being the underdogs, it's very Russia and Ukraine or something, isn't it? They've launched an incursion into the enemy territory. They're massively outnumbered, but they are absolutely convinced

that right and justice are on their side, even though presumably the people living in the surrounding French villages might see things rather differently. Yeah, might have a slightly different perspective. But they capitalise on it, as we will see. So they benefit from it too. It also reflects the fact that clearly for the English, when they crest this hill, which we described at the end of the last episode, and they look out and they see the French forces in front of them, it's terrifying. So again, to quote Henry's chaplain, he sees the French cavalry

thundering from all directions to block their path. And he says they're like a countless swarm of locusts. And he has no doubt that the English are absolutely massively outnumbered. So he says their numbers, the numbers of the French, were so great as not to be even comparable with ours. And of course, he and Henry and everybody in the force is aware that there are other reasons why the English are not in peak fighting form, because they have travelled 250 miles in 17 days from Harfleur to the Somme, down the length of the Somme because the bridges and the fords and the causeways have been held against them, and then back up again. And the corollary in turn of that is that they haven't eaten properly for several days because Henry had only taken supplies for eight days. The weather is terrible, kind of icy sleet. It's become very hilly, so they've been going up and

down. So that's kind of more tiring than just marching across flat land. And I think it's clear when they see that force in front of them, they are feeling very demoralized. The feeling that, you know, this is it, this is absolute curtains. But I do think that there is certainly one man in that army who does think, you know, we have a chance here. And that man is Henry himself. This is where individuals matter, right? The we have a chance here. And that man is Henry himself. This is where individuals matter, right? The individuals do matter in war. And this is why leadership and inspirational command really makes a difference.

And it's why I think you can look at Shakespeare's play and say he burnishes Henry's reputation with this incredible poetry. But I do think that Henry clearly deserves his reputation as an astonishing military commander with an ability to inspire people who otherwise might just have turned into a kind of despairing rabble. So everybody sees, he feels no despair seeing the French army. So again, the chaplain describes Henry observing the French very calmly and quite heedless of danger. He orders his men to dismount, to ready themselves for battle. Remember, he's ordered them to wear their armour, to wear their surcoats, to indicate the fact that they are ready for battle,

no matter when it happens. He clearly stays on horseback. He rides along the battlefront. He gives his stirring speech. So he tells them that they should have a fair day and a gracious victory in the better of their enemies. He states bluntly, I am not going to be captured. You know, if there is a defeat, then I will die in the battle rather than impose the burden of a ransom on the English. And it's at this point, not as in Shakespeare on the eve of the battle, that he makes his comment about not wanting any more men. You know what, this is very Theoden at the charge of the Rehirim before Minas Tirith or something, isn't it? The spectacle of the king on his horse and his men lined up before him and him genuinely infusing them with a sense of mission and a sense of inevitability, I guess, is what he gives them. I think absolutely. He's clearly a very inspirational speaker, but the difference is that he doesn't then launch a great charge because he assumes that they are going to be

facing battle that day. So he orders the priests to move through the lines, to take people's confessions. The English kneel down with their hands towards heaven. And there are French accounts of the battle that they're impressed by this. So this has been a theme running throughout the march that Henry is kind of inspiring his men to share in his own sense of a divine purpose. I think quite different to the, you know, the chevauchee that the Black Prince or Edward III or Duke of Lancaster were launching in the first half. Henry is a very, very devout man. And it's not a kind of hand-wringing, thought-for-the-day kind of Christianity. It's a martial, smite them, God is on our side kind of Christianity. And it clearly inspires the English. So they are down kneeling, praying, asking for God's blessing. But having done this, the French are not offering battle. No sign of movement at all from the army in front of them. Henry keeps the English in battle formation. And when he sees the French

starting to kind of move, people drifting across, he shifts the line so that they are always facing the French ranks. But dusk is closing in. You know, it's cold, it's wet, it's getting dark. And it becomes clear that, you know, there is going to be no battle that day. The English can see the French kind of retiring to the nearby villages. So Agincourt is one of them. Rissauville is another. They're kind of settling down there. They're setting up their tents. Of course, I mean, that's agony for the English because they know that the French are going to be much better sheltered, much better fed. They're settling down there. They're setting up their tents. Of course, I mean, that's agony for the English because they know that the French are going to be much better sheltered, much better fed.

They're going to be regularly supplied. But the English stay in battle order until it's completely dark and they can no longer see the enemy. And it's only at dusk, which is about 4.40, that Henry finally stands his army down. The French have no urgency, right? Time is on their side. They will accumulate more men probably as time goes on

and the English will become only more hungry, more tired, more wet, more miserable. French have no urgency, right? Time is on their side. They will accumulate more men probably as time goes on. And the English will become only more hungry, more tired, more wet, more miserable. Yeah. So actually, I mean, it's the French interest to delay as long as possible. Absolutely. And also more people will come in and join the French army because people are coming in from across northern France. But Henry is still on high alert. They are so close that they can see the French bonfires.

They can hear them kind of chatting and talking. And again, it's one of the themes that is brilliantly used by Shakespeare and derives from authentic memories of the battle that rumours spread through the English ranks that the French are dicing over the prisoners that they're going to take the following day. That they are so confident of victory that they're already working out who's going to get what prisoner arrogance hubris tom well yes and so it's loud it's mouthy it's boastful the contrast again with the english ranks henry has imposed says i don't want to hear a word no one is to talk so all that stuff you get in shakespeare of henry kind of wandering around and people chatting and stuff. This doesn't happen. There is total silence.

And the reason for that is he wants to make it impossible for the French to launch a surprise attack by night. And of course, it's quite intimidating for the French. They wonder, have the English slipped away? What is the meaning of this terrifying, ominous silence? So the rain is bucketing down. The English soldiers try and find, you know, there are woods that they can shelter under the trees. There are kind of hedges, whatever. They try and get what shelter they can. Henry himself and his high command withdraw to a village in their rear called Maison Sel. They don't sleep there because they have a battle to plan. And around midnight, Henry sends a group of pick knights to go out and to scout out the battlefield, to work out the precise coordinates of the French lines. And when those knights come back and they deliver their report, then he and his high command finalise their battle plan. Henry does not sleep.

His peers don't sleep. Instead, he is armoured and then fully armed. He hears three masses. So again, the sense that he's trusting in God. And then at dawn, as the sun rises, he puts on his helmet and his helmet has this crown kind of placed on the top. And the crown has the emblems of both England and France, bright gold. And this means that there will be no missing him in battle. Yeah. So all those Frenchmen who are looking to capture the king, they know exactly where he is.

And as we will see, this is very deliberate. Henry's not a man who would employ doubles, right? No, absolutely. And then in preparation for ordering his battle ranks, he doesn't climb onto a charger. He climbs onto a small gray horse. And I think this is so emblematic of his character. On the one hand, incredible degree of self-confidence, but at the same time, also this kind of Christian sense of humility fused into this idea of him on a small grey horse.

He's drawing attention to the fact that he is humble as well as confident. Riding on the horse, he orders his men to take up their positions. So what is his plan? What is this strategy that he and his peers have been devising through the night? It's determined by two factors. And the first of these is the terrain, and the second is the makeup of his army. And both of them are quite distinctive. So the terrain first, they are on the road to Calais. The French have blocked them. And this road, the reason the French have blocked them where they are is that there's expanse of relatively flat fields.

There is a slight dip. So between the French and the English, there's a slight declivity, which means that whoever is going to be attacking will have to kind of go down and then up. It's not steep, but it's a mild kind of gradient. Right. The fields have recently been ploughed. The soil here, it's not kind of light. It's not the kind of soil where rain would drain away easily. It's thick, heavy clay.

And that means that the ground is pretty sodden. Yeah. So that is something else that Henry is factoring into his plans for the battle. I mean, anyone who's read the Lady Bird book or something knows that Agincourt is a very muddy battle. Well, yes. I remember one of the first books I read on Agincourt was John Keegan's Face of Battle, which is about Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme. And Agincourt and the Somme both have mud. They do indeed. As a kind of abiding theme. So there's this road, there's ploughed fields,

potentially very muddy. There are two villages on either side of the road and they're about a kilometre apart. So there's Agincourt on the left of the English as they're facing the French and there's a village called Tramacourt on the right. The battlefield is also bounded by woodland on both sides. And this woodland tapers in from the French positions.

I mean, again, not massively, but to a significant degree towards the English positions. So this is good for the English because, of course, they have far fewer men at arms. Maybe we'll come to the precise numbers, but I reckon around a thousand. And the French have many many many multiples of that so the fact that they can't be outflanked because there are the woods is very important and it also means that if the french advance towards the english there the ground in front of them will narrow there they will have to kind of crowd closer close together as they approach the english lines. Yes, it does. And so this then segues with the composition of Henry's forces to determine how he's going to kind of line up his ranks.

So it's conventional in battles in this period for armies to basically divide it into three positions. And Henry does this again. Normally, you'd have a front rank, you'd have a vanguard, you'd have a main body, and then you'd have a rear guard you'd have a vanguard you have a main body and then you'd have a rear guard yeah henry can't afford to do that he doesn't have enough men to do that so instead he draws them in a kind of line across this kilometer of open field between the woods on either side and the result is a kind of i suppose a thin silver line you might call it that's a thin red line yeah so henry it. I was about to say, a thin red line. So Henry commands the central division. And remember, he's got this gold crown.

He's got his banner. There's no way the French are going to be able to miss him. He is in the middle of the middle division. On his right, he has a division commanded by the Duke of York, who is a close cousin of Henry's. He's a great fan of Chaucer. And perhaps not coincidentally, that being so, he's written a great famous treatise on hunting in English. So he's properly an English peer. And to Henry's left is the third division, which is commanded by a guy called

Thomas Lord Camoys. And the reason that he's put in command is that he is 65. So he brings many, many years of experience. All three divisions consist of men at arms. So none of the English, not even the king, is going to be on horseback. But of course, the key decision for Henry is where he's going to place the main body of his army, which consists of archers. And the precise details of this is much debated. I mean, you can read multiple accounts of Agincourt and they all have slightly different sense of where it is. But I think the outline is pretty clear. Henry places large blocks of archers on both wings, kind of sheltered by trees in the woods, some of them. And he also positions them in wedges between

the three divisions. So in two wedges. And these are placed under another man who is very distinguished and really quite elderly. And this is a guy called Sir Thomas Irpingham, who is the most loyal of loyalist Lancastrians. His loyalty to Lancaster goes back to Henry IV before Henry became king. Thomas Irpingham had accompanied him on Crusade, where Henry picked up his ostrich and gone to Jerusalem and all that kind of thing. So Irpingham really is, I mean, properly seasoned. Oh, very much so. And completely reliable. So he was again with Henry in exile. He accompanies Henry back to England when he overthrows Richard II. So he's been with Henry in exile. He accompanies Henry back to England when he overthrows Richard II. So he's been there, he's seen everything. And the fact that he's now

in command of the archers reflects the fact that Henry is putting a premium on experience. He wants people who he can absolutely rely on to hold his back and to do the right thing, even in conditions of incredible tension and danger. But at the same time, as Henry is emphasising experience, he's also not afraid to innovate. And so this is why on the march, he had ordered his archers, even though they were weary tired hungry to make themselves some wooden stakes sharp stakes and to carry them as well with everything else and this is something that edward iii's armies for instance had not had it's something that is quite novel and so the various kind of debates as to where henry might have got idea from it. And one thesis is that the Turks had used stakes like this with their archers against the knights at Nicopolis, the great disaster for Christian arms in 1396 that Marshal Boussacou had fought in,

the great French paladin. I think a likelier theory is that Henry is remembering the Battle of Shrewsbury. Right, because that was the pea field. The pea field with the stakes. Stakes there, right? Yeah. And of course, that was the battle where he'd been hit in the face by the arrow. Yeah. So a very traumatic and defining experience for him. So it makes sense that he would remember that.

Yeah, and it's, I think, important to emphasise that battles are rare events. Pitched battles are rare events. They don't come along very often. But Henry had experienced one when he was very, very young. And I think the memory of the role that these stakes had played, which of course weren't sharp because they were used for holding up peas, but they had prevented a mass charge by his father's men. I'm sure that probably this is where he gets the idea for it. And of course, the broader experience, as you said, that Henry had from Shrewsbury is being hit in the face by an arrow. So he knows what the impact is. I mean, he knows how devastating, you know, a hail storm of arrows can be.

And that's why I think it's based on the memories of that. You know, maybe he doesn't expect to win, but he feels he's in with a very, very good chance. But of course, he's not the only one with a plan. The French have a battle plan as well. And we know this because we actually have it. It's one of only a couple of battle plans to have survived from this period. This is amazing. Yeah, it's incredible.

So they put it down on paper or on parchment or whatever. by the two great professional soldiers in the French ranks. So Boussico, who we've mentioned, the great paladin, and Dalbray, who is the constable, the guy who kind of has a nominal control. But there are two problems with it. The first is that they'd actually drawn it up several days before and it doesn't exactly correspond to the terrain that you get at Agincourt. But the other problem is that they are no longer really in control. Their command has been superseded by the fact that large quantities of very high-ranking peers have turned up. So their original plan was to divide the army into two,

that the front rank would be commanded by Boussico and Dalbray as the professional soldiers, because they knew that they would be marching into the English arrow storm. And Dalbray in particular, he has fought the English. I mean, he's that old that he'd been part of the war back in Edward III's time and it's a slight myth isn't it that they take the English lightly because these guys they know that the English they remember the battles in the first bit of the hundred years war they know the Henry V he knows what he's doing they are not underestimating him right and in fact they didn't really want to battle at all is that right well I think they would have been perfectly happy not to fight a battle at all and just

let Henry's army disintegrate. They'd have been fine with that. They've been told basically by the king, by the Dauphin, by the peers of the realm, no, we have to fight. And so they've drawn up this plan where Boussicaut and Dalbray will command the vanguard. And then the second, the main body will be commanded by the Duke of Al alison you know who's this great kind of boar of a man they'll put crossbowmen on the wings and they will have an elite force of cavalry that will be used to clear the archers and it will be kind of total warfare dominic so the crossbowmen will fire the men at arms will charge the cavalry will sweep down on the archers and get rid of them and you know the english basically won't know what's hit them they'll be overwhelmed in a single devastating

moment of impact so kind of nelsonian go straight at them and use our firepower to blast them out of the way just everything throw everything you've got at them but the problem is because of the woods the cavalry is not in a position to march down and sweep the archers away so they can't outflank them so that's a problem but the other problem is is that because all these dukes and counts you know members of the royal family have arrived they outrank Boussico and Dalbray and because the king isn't there because the Dauphin isn't there because the Duke of Orléans who is the highest ranking royal member of the family, is there, but he's quite young. I mean, it's his birthday is in a couple of days. There isn't actually now an obvious commander. They're

all kind of shouting and yelling and claiming precedence. They spend all night kind of basically arguing about where they should all go, because you've got all these dukes, all these counts, they're not going to hang around at the rear. want to be in the front so finally they come to a conclusion i quote juliet barker in her wonderful book on agincourt she says it's a conclusion that was fair but foolish and basically the solution is that they will all fight in the front line although alison will retain his command of the main body of the army behind them and this means that they have to lengthen the line to fit in all these peers and dukes which in turn means that there is no room for the archers and the crossbowmen so the solution to this is i will just get rid of them we'll put them at the back of

of the army that's bonkers yeah that's bonkers so just before we go to the break tom i know this is very controversial among historians talk us through numbers, because for those of us who grew up in England reading kind of old-fashioned patriotic history books, the impression we were given was that for every hundred Frenchmen, there was one Englishman or something like that. But it is true, isn't it, that whatever historians think about the numbers, there are very, very different accounts. There is no doubt there are far more Frenchmen than there are Englishmen. Is that right? Well, so this has always basically been taken for granted and not just by English historians, by French historians as well. It's not just, you know, patriotic chauvinism that leads people to say that.

The overwhelming body of the sources emphasise the fact that the English were very, very outnumbered. And it seems to me clear that, you know, we said this at the beginning of the show, that the reason why it has this resonance is because from the beginning, the English believe this. And to reiterate that, I would say the conventional estimate on the numbers of the English Stagion Corps is around 6,000 men. So 1,000 men at arms, about 5,000 archers. And this is based on the evidence of the two eyewitnesses at the battle who were on the English side. So the chaplain who we've mentioned, and there's also a Burgundian lord who was fighting with the English called Jean Lefebvre. And their estimates kind of, they balance out. But the reason

why these figures have become controversial over the past 20 years is because Anne Currie, the great historian of the Agincourt campaign. And Herald, yeah. Yes. So she wrote this kind of game-changing book called Agincourt, A New History. It came out in 2005 and then it was reissued in 2015 for the anniversary of the battle. And she had gone through loads of primary sources. She'd looked at all the scrolls that no one had looked at since 1415 and so on. And she crunched the numbers. And she particularly focused on the recruitment and the composition of the various English contingents that went on the Agincourt campaign.

And it's absolutely indispensable work. I mean, I've shamelessly drawn on it for these episodes. But it is also the controversy is that she uses these documents, these primary sources, to estimate that Henry's army had been maybe as high as 9,000. Actually, over the course of her book, her estimate of how large Henry's numbers were rises and rises and rises. And her estimate of the numbers of the French is that they're around 12,000. So that would be an imbalance of four to three. So the

French have a larger force, but it's not the kind of victory against overwhelming odds that tradition says it is. There has been, I think, quite a kind of kickback against that. So Juliette Barker in her book on Agincourt, I mean, she absolutely acknowledges, you know, there's no one who has a comparable knowledge of the minutiae of the financial administrative documents of the campaign. You know, Professor Currie is absolutely the leader on this. But she does kick back against it. And the reason that she does this is firstly looking at the French numbers. Basically, we don't know.

We don't have the documents that would enable us to work it out because of the wars of religion, the French Revolution and so on. They were lost, right? They're all destroyed. Yeah, they've all just been lost. We just can't know. But the point she makes that does seem to me, I mean, maybe I want to believe it. I probably do want to believe it,

but it does seem to me really the clinching argument is that all the sources from the beginning emphasise that the victory is won against overwhelming odds. And I think that if Anne Currie's figures are accurate, that doesn't make sense. And I think that when you look at her figures, I mean, I think she said before, she's very much not Team Henry. She doesn't seem to like Henry very much at all. She has a tendency to make the English figures as high as she can and the French figures as low as she can. So I'm sure, Dominic, you, maybe lots of our listeners, maybe not our French listeners,

if we have any, but I think that they can listen to this and feel that the traditional account of the English being outnumbered, probably two to one, I would think. Maybe two to one, maybe at an extreme three to one. Tom, this is absolutely music to my ears. Absolute music to my ears. So to my ears so let's recap tom i'm what i'm taking from what you've just said is the english are outnumbered i sorry i should say the english and welch are outnumbered perhaps six seven eight to one tom is that what you're that what uh that's what you're saying uh probably two to one so ten to one odds a pinch three to one

I think no more than that and on that bombshell we'll take a break and Tom we few we happy few we band of brothers we will be returning

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Welcome back to The Rest Is History. It is dawn on the 25th of October, 1415. And if you'd been a bird flying over the field of Agincourt, you would have seen a man in a glittering crown on a little grey horse riding up and down this line of silver-clad men preparing Tom to step into the annals of legend. That's Henry V. Well, you say they're silver-clad, Dominic, but of course the English armour is pretty stained by this point with mud and rust.

They look like a rugby scrum. Yeah, there's quite a contrast with the French, who, of course, are much more spruce. But yes, Henry on his small grey horse, riding up and down the English lines, proclaiming the justice of his cause, appealing to the patriotism of his men, reminding them of the record of English armies in France, the victories won by Edward III, by the Black Prince, and making reference to boasts made by the French that if they capture archers, they will cut off two fingers from the right hand of every archer. Yeah.

Which is where the myth that the V sign originates. Hold on. The myth? I don't think there's actually any evidence of that. Oh, this is disappointing. I mean, maybe, maybe it's much later, but certainly the readiness of the French to cut off the two fingers of the right arm of the bowman. Henry certainly makes reference to that. And so his men cheer him. Henry then sends his heralds to meet with the French heralds. You know, this is kind of like people shaking hands before a football match or something, effectively,

because obviously there is no chance of agreeing terms. The English herald returns. Henry dismounts from his horse, takes his place in the centre of the line. Banner is unfurled, crown on his head. There he is, facing him, the French lines. And again, I'll quote Juliet Barker. On one side stood row upon numberless row of motionless French men at arms, clad from head to foot in burnished armour, armed with swords and lances shortened for fighting on foot,

and with brightly coloured pennons and banners waving over their heads. And it had actually been the expectation of the Royal Council that had been held at Rouen a few days before that the mere sight of this would be enough to send the english running away in terror but dominic they do the english run away in terror they know nothing of their bulldog spirit ever of an englishman yeah the metal so but obviously there's a you know as i said there's a tremendous contrast because the english look an absolute state, smeared in filth and dirt.

And actually, Dominic, Juliet Barker has this glorious detail, which I also remember Robert Hardy, who was in... Winston Churchill. Yeah, he was always playing Winston Churchill. But he was very into longbows, kind of famous actor. I remember a documentary where he made the same point, that the archers at Agincourt have cut off their soiled britches so that if they need to void their bowels, and I guess that the sight of a large, fast army of French charging you might well make you loosen your bowels. You can just evacuate onto the muddy fields of France.

Do you know, Tom, I'm thrilled to hear this because Sam Brock Jr., when he heard that we were doing this podcast, he said this to me about two days ago. Oh, you're going to put that detail in. Is that true? And I'm absolutely thrilled. It is true. But it also strikes me that the sight of, if you're a Frenchman, right, if you're used to the pampered living of early 15th century France, the sight of a gigantic Welshman with no trousers on.

Yes. Drinking his hairy legs. Voiling his hairy legs. Voiling his bowels out. I know. I know. No wonder they won. But there's something even worse, which is, again, as Juliette Ralfa points out, that this is an option not available to the men at arms, encased in their padded steel plate

armour. Grim though the sight of them must have been she writes the smell was probably worse now hold on i said in the first episode were they a bit ill you know have they got horrendous diarrhea and you said oh no no they're in great form but this suggests to me that some of them do have you know no they've been standing there well as we see they i mean they stand there for quite a long time as we will see right but also i, you obviously have nerves of steel. Yeah. But generally, if you're facing something terrifying, your bowels make churn. That's all I'm saying.

So why is this an issue at Agincourt and not in other battles? Because we don't hear of similar things happening in other battles. I mean, do people do this in the, I don't know. They definitely didn't do this in the Battle of Britain, Tom. Sure. I've asked my brother that. I think it's bringing alive an aspect of medieval combat that perhaps is often underexplored. We're probing it. That's the word. We're probing it.

Right. And one of the reasons why they might be caught short is the fact that the battle lines are drawn up, but then nothing happens. Because as we've said, it's entirely in the French interest to just wait, you know, to see if the English line will disintegrate, to see how many more people will join them. And this insistence on waiting for reinforcements to come, you know, proves its worth because squadrons of horsemen and men at arms are coming in throughout the early hours of the 25th of October. So a classic example, kind of tragic example, is the Duke of Brabant, who's the brother of John the Fearless. He comes late. He's been having kind of brunch. He gets told the battle's happening. He goes, oh God, leaps on his horse, gallops up to the battle, hasn't had time to put his

surcoat on. So he reaches for a banner, cuts a hole in it, puts it over his head, gallops into the battle and promptly gets taken prisoner. So that's a very tragic story. And his fate, as we will see, is properly tragic. But as we said also, the truth is probably Boussico and Dalbray, between them, would have been perfectly happy not to fight at all. It's all the French nobles who are itching to have a crack at the English. Anyway, so they stand facing each other for hour after hour. And this is why the toilet facilities is important. Right. Because you don't want to get caught short.

And about 10 o'clock, Henry decides this is ridiculous. You know, we can't afford these delaying tactics. We have to get on with this. So he makes an amazing decision. He decides that even outnumbered as he is, he is going to have to get on with this. So he makes an amazing decision. He decides that even outnumbered as he is, he is going to have to make the first assault. So after the crossing of the Somme, this is the second of three moments of excruciating danger where everything might have just fallen to pieces. He orders the baggage train and non-combatants to assemble at the rear of the

battle line and to follow as they advance so that they won't be isolated and to draw the wagons up in a line so that their rear will be defendable. He then gives orders for the entire English line to advance. Every English soldier kneels, kisses the ground, and they do this thing where they take a piece of soil and put it in their mouth. And it's a kind of trusting themselves to God kind of thing. And they've done that. And then Henry gives the battle cry, St. George, this day, help thine own. Massive cheer. And they start advancing. But this is the moment of peril, because for the archers, who are maybe five-sixths of the entire army, you know, they are basically defenceless at this point. They have to pull their stakes up, move forward,

hammer the stakes back in. And the whole time, if the French cavalry had charged, they would have been in no position to fire back. They would have just been overwhelmed. So for Henry, this is, I mean, you can imagine it. His heart must have been in his mouth. Why didn't the French charge? Yeah, what's going on?

I think because they're taken by surprise. They can't believe that the English would have the nerve to advance on them. And so, you know, they're not on their horses. They're not in the front line. They're not ready to go. And this is an absolute disastrous failure on the French part because the French line is now within the range of the English longbows. And Sir Thomas Irpingham, who is the old veteran who's in charge of the archers, he's got this baton and he throws it in the air as a signal that they should unleash their first volley.

And this is what they do. So in the first minute, 75,000 arrows rain down on the French lines. And by this point on the French lines. And by this point, the French cavalry have got their act together and are charging. And they are charging into darkness because these arrows, you know, they blot out the sun. And there's no need for the English to kill the knights. The developments in armour are so impressive that most of the arrows just kind of bounce off the plate. But what they need to do is to knock right the knights off their horses and the sheer volume of arrows descending in this kind of storm is more than sufficient to do that or of course to bring the horses down yeah 75 000 arrows i mean you can't imagine it can you i mean i can imagine 700 arrows i'm not sure i can imagine 7,000 arrows coming

out of the sky at maybe 75,000. I mean, that is, and they're coming at such a speed and they, I mean, they're heavy, right? They've got bits of steel or whatever it is on the end and all of that. Yeah. So the technology of arrowheads has developed. They're much, much, I can't remember exactly why, but it's to do with the weighting and the serration of the arrowhead. It means that they are much more lethal in their effects, as of course, Henry knows. And Henry, unlike Percy at the Battle of Shrewsbury, has made sure that there are plentiful supplies of arrows. The English can just keep firing and firing and firing. And you have knights who are knocked off into the mud, or you have horses that are shot. Wounded horses start kind of careering round, maybe charging back into the battle line behind them or impaling themselves

on stakes. I mean, absolutely hideous. And amazingly, the casualties among the horsemen themselves seem to have been relatively light. And a lot of them just kind of crawl their way out of the mud and draw, and they're later charged with cowardice. But the impact of the failure of their charge to reach the archers is most devastating on the men at arms who were drawn up behind them and who are now advancing in turn. And the reason for this is that they have churned up the ground. They've got frightened horses knocking into them the combination of this means that it is really really difficult for them to advance towards the line of english and all the time the arrows are still raining down on them and is it true which what i read as a boy that

when you fall down in this mud this sort of pasturechendaele, the Battle of the Somme scene, this quagmire, that if you fall down in your armour, your armour is so heavy that you can't get up again. Is that true? Yeah. And if the mud is of sufficient liquidity in due course, there's a serious chance that you will drown if you can't move. So it's pretty hideous. And the time it takes for the French men-at-arms to reach the English line, if it was solid ground, it would be no time at all. But because the ground is so churned up, because there are all these horses rushing everywhere, because the arrows are falling, because they have to keep their eyes lowered to ensure that they don't get hit through the visor or whatever. It takes them maybe five to 10 minutes to cross

the gap. And by the time they reach the English lines, those who do manage to reach the English lines, I mean, they are shattered. Their armour is very, very heavy. And to be slopping through all this kind of hideous, thick, viscous mud, they are completely exhausted by the time they reach the English line. And adding to the quality of nightmare that they must have found themselves in, they are being funneled. Because remember, the trees draw in towards the English line, and they're being shot at from the wings. So the instinctive reaction, no matter how brave you are, of course, is to bunch up away from the two sides

in the middle. And then on top of that, remember, Henry has this crown, he has his banner, he's situated himself in the middle. He is offering himself up as bait. He's saying, come and get me. And so the consequence of this is the French lines are so tightly compressed that it's very difficult for many of them even to raise their arms. And even if they do have room to raise their arms, many of them are so exhausted by this point that they can't really move. So this becomes your classic crush, right? They're in a crush in the mud. Yes. And actually the arrows are raining down on them all the time. And ahead of them, they've got blokes with no trousers on who are soiling themselves. Yeah. Avoiding their bowels,

left, right and centre. And of course, the winds are gusting, so it's spraying into their face. Yeah, it's kind of chemical warfare at its worst. And so with all of these horrors manifesting themselves on the battlefield, I think it is really impressive that actually enough French men-at-arms reach the English line, that the crunch is pretty pulverising.

Tom, it's lovely that you're being so generous to the French. So I talked about the two previous moments of excruciating peril faced by Henry's army, the Somme and when they advance. This is the third. Because remember, there are only a thousand English men at arms. It's a very thin line. And if that line had broken, Henry would still have lost the battle. The French would have redeemed triumph from seeming disaster. But the English line holds. So you were saying, sorry, I interrupted you. There was a huge crunch and they drive the English back a bit, don't they? Is that right? Yeah. So it's like a kind of rugby scrum, I guess, kind of smashing into a much weaker, smaller scrum, kind of pushes it back. But then the English line holds. And it's the

fact the English line holds that makes the English victory possible. And Henry's chaplain, who is at the back, he's a non-competent, but he's close enough. He can see what's going on. I mean, he's full of praise for this. He wrote later, never, it seemed to our older men, had Englishmen ever fallen upon their enemies more boldly and fiercely or with a better will. And so the melee is incredibly ferocious, but the English amazingly, despite being so outnumbered, have the advantage for all the reasons that we've discussed. The arrows are still falling down. The French are compacted. They're exhausted. And of course, also what is starting to happen is that great piles of bodies are starting to mount up, particularly in front of the position of the king, because all the French lords want to have a crack at him. Gloucester,

his youngest brother, Humphrey, he's never fought in a battle before he is bloodied when a sword is jabbed through his groin oh my god king stands over him defending his brother you know absolute scenes part of his crown is hacked off so they really are going after the king but actually the main focus of the French line seems to have been on the right wing for reasons that are not entirely clear because York is killed there, 86 of his men with him. And this seems to be where the fighting is at its most brutal and hard, but it's brutal and hard along the entire length of the battle line. But increasingly, as the minutes turn to hours, effectively it is becoming a bloodbath because the French are in no position except to just stand there or perhaps lie there and be slaughtered. And the measure of this is that archers start to sneak out from their positions, from behind their stakes.

And they have mallets, you know, which they use to hammer in their stakes. And they use these mallets to knock over the French. I mean, it's kind of like knocking over a ten pin with a ball. And they just, you know, the men at arms just kind of keel over and then the bowmen will draw out their swords, their daggers and plunge it in through the eye sockets or through the kind of the gap in the neck. And so it's commented of the casualties in this battle that the vast majority perish of wounds to the eyes or to the neck and it's at this point that people are drowning isn't it because in the crush the crush of bodies corpses horses all the chaos the mud frenchmen are falling and just never getting up again because they're being suffocated by the mud

and the weight of bodies yeah and the english realize this and this is why they keep knocking them over so thomas walsingham our friend the monk in saint auburn's he clearly picking up on eyewitness reports and he says the french stood immobilized whilst our men wrenched axes from their hands and felled them as if they were cattle. And this goes on for three hours, Tom? It basically goes on for three hours. I mean, it's an enormous, yeah. Imagine how exhausting. It's hideous. Just the mud, the blood, just awful, awful, awful yeah hideous and yet somehow oddly rousing

well as we'll see i think even the english are kind of stunned and some of them are distressed by the scale of the slaughter but we're in the final episode we'll look at reactions to the battle but just to finish off the account of the battle itself, basically it's over by one o'clock. The flower of French chivalry is either dead or taken prisoner. So the English have taken lots of prisoners and Henry seems to have his victory. But then there comes one final twist, probably the most controversial moment in Henry's reign, features in Shakespeare's play. And essentially what happens is that Henry thinks he's won, and then a cry goes up from the rear that the French are rallying and are about to launch another attack and that they're attacking the wagons. So Henry thinks he's surrounded.

And this is a massive crisis. It's clear that people have broken in through the wagons and they are making off with all his treasures. So his crown, so not the one on his helmet, but his other one. Yeah. Lots of jewels, a kind of jeweled scepter, sword of state, a piece of the true cross. I mean, terrible for Henry. And so Henry thinking, you know, my men are exhausted. We're still outnumbered. He gives the very controversial that all the prisoners that have been taken should be killed. And his men are very reluctant to obey this order, partly because obviously that, you know, for pecuniary reasons, a dead prisoner can pay no ransom. But also because this is very

shocking. I mean, undoubtedly they have moral qualms about it. It's against the laws of chivalry. It's against Christian teaching. But Henry does it anyway. And what's amazing is that he's never actually blamed for this by French chroniclers. They seem to have accepted that he did what he had to do. He's a hard man. He's a ruthless man. And he does what he has to do to keep his army going.

He has to do it because if they are being attacked from the rear as well and they have in their midst this kind of, you know, hundreds or whatever of Frenchmen, you know, the Frenchmen will just turn on them as soon as they get the chance. So they have to get rid of... That's his thinking, is it? So if you think about it, if you've got more of the enemy coming frontally, they're coming round the rear, and you have large bodies of Frenchmen in full armour in your own positions,

then if they all combine, you're just going to be obliterated. So, quote Juliet Barker again, she says this was the only order possible. And I think in terms of tactics and strategy, she's right. I mean, morally, it remains a blot on Henry's escutcheon, but I think the context of the time makes it clear why he does it. And the irony is, is that actually the rumor wasn't true. The French are not rallying and the people who have attacked the baggage train are not soldiers they're probably locals who have seized their chance to you know to make off with a crown and a bit of the true cross right you know some jewels and stuff they're just um sort of local foot pads or something helping themselves to the crown jewels yeah well i think they're probably locals who think well you know we've had all our harvest has been absolutely ruined yeah let's try and get something out of this business. But obviously the murder of the prisoners adds to the death toll of the battle. And it adds to the number of magnates who are killed, which for contemporaries is perhaps the most shocking aspect of the whole battle. So they're dead. It becomes clear that there isn't going to be another French attack. And

the battle ends very formally. The French herald approaches Henry and Henry says, do you accept my victory? Have I won? And the herald says, yes, you know, we concede. And then Henry asks, he looks around and he sees a castle rising up over the trees. And he says, what is the name of that castle? What is the name of the village that surrounds it? And he's told that it is Agincourt or actually Agincourt in French. And a Burgundian chronicler reports Henry's reply. And because, said the king, all battles ought to bear the names of the nearest fortress, village, or town to the place where they were fought. This battle will now and forever be known as the Battle of Agincourt.

Tom, wonderful stuff. Absolutely wonderful stuff. From this day to the ending of the world, we who did this podcast shall be remembered. So, everybody, we will return next time for the final episode in this series. We'll discuss the casualty figures. We'll talk about what happens to the people taken prisoner. We'll talk about the aftermath of the battle and henry's determination to make himself king of france

as well as england and we will look at what happens at the end of his reign and we'll discuss tom we'll have a little chat won't we about henry v's reputation and his legacy and where he stands today because i know that some, perhaps associated with this podcast, have in the past said foolish things about Henry V for which they will be wanting to apologise. So on that bombshell, we will see you for the tumultuous and decisive final episode of this series next time.

Of course, if you're a member of the Rest Is History Club, you hear it now. If you're not, therestishistory.com is the place to go to. And on that bombshell, au revoir. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

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