“He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
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 remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day 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 a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”
Shakespeare, Henry V (Act IV, Scene III),
It was on October 25th in 1415 that Henry V of England led his troops to a resounding victory over France at Agincourt, although the English were outnumbered, and fighting on French territory. Making victory even less likely was the fact that his troops were basically on foot, while the French forces included many armed and mounted knights.
Henry had one important thing on his side – longbows. The longbow wasn’t new technology, but the English had turned it into a devastating military system. Henry had some 5,000 archers and they had plenty of arrows. He also had the ideal setting for his archers to confront the French advance. The battlefield was a narrow, muddy opening between two dense forests, basically the worst possible conditions for the French. The mud impeded the French advance, while the dense woodlands made it impossible for the French to create flanking or rear attacks. The terrain forced them to make direct charges, straight into hail after hail of English arrows. The horsemen who successfully approached the English lines found that the archers were protected from cavalry charges by sharpened, outward-facing stakes. In the narrow opening afforded them, with piles of bodies to their rear, dense forests on either side, and thousands of well-sheltered English longbowmen in front of them, the French could neither charge nor retreat effectively. Once the French formation collapsed, the battle became a slaughter. The English were merciless. Historians estimate that the archers may have fired hundreds of thousands of arrows that day. The piles of French bodies were so high that it was difficult to identify exactly who did die that day. Some of their wives had to find out over time, simply from the fact that their husbands never returned. The bloodshed didn’t even end with the eventual French retreat. Henry ordered most of his prisoners killed, although how many actually died in the massacre is uncertain. He spared only those of the very highest ranks, and even ordered the killing of some men worth ransoming.
Here is a concise description of the action:
Per Wikipedia:
“The French had suffered a catastrophic defeat. In all, around 6,000 of their fighting men lay dead on the ground. The list of casualties, one historian has noted, “read like a roll call of the military and political leaders of the past generation”. Among them were 90–120 great lords and bannerets killed, including three dukes, nine counts and one viscount, also an archbishop. Of the great royal office holders, France lost its constable, an admiral, the Master of Crossbowmen, Master of the Royal Household and prévôt of the marshals. 3,069 knights and squires were killed, while at least 2,600 more corpses were found without coats of arms to identify them. Entire noble families were wiped out in the male line, and in some regions an entire generation of landed nobility was annihilated. The bailiffs of nine major northern towns were killed, often along with their sons, relatives and supporters. In the words of Juliet Barker, the battle “cut a great swath through the natural leaders of French society. Estimates of the number of prisoners vary between 700 and 2,200, amongst them the dukes of Orléans and Bourbon, the counts of Eu, Vendôme, Richemont (brother of the Duke of Brittany and stepbrother of Henry V) and Harcourt, and marshal Jean Le Maingre.”
In contrast, Shakespeare contended that the English casualties amounted to 29 men, of which 25 were unnamed, presumably untitled.
(Cough. Cough.)
OK, that was a bit of bullshit, although it wasn’t entirely Shakespeare’s bullshit. His source, Holinshed, reported the same absurdly low figure—then immediately added that “writers of greater credit” put the English dead at more than 500 or 600. Shakespeare, displaying the instincts of a gifted press secretary, went with 29.
Exaggeration aside, Agincourt was one of history’s great tactical victories, destroying a larger force and wiping out a remarkable portion of the French military and political leadership. It also greatly strengthened Henry’s position in France. After five more years of war, conquest and French civil strife, the Treaty of Troyes recognized Henry as regent of France and heir to the French throne.
(He would die a little more than two years later, just weeks before Charles VI, and therefore never actually sit on that throne.)
More important than any of that to us today is that the victory inspired one of Shakespeare’s best speeches, as cited above and shown below. Ol’ Shakey often used his speeches and monologues to deliver melancholy, philosophical ruminations about the fragility of life, but this was different. It was a stirring call to action for country and brotherhood.
