BARONS, KNIGHTS, ESQUIRES, SERVITEURS, AND OTHERS THAT WER WITHE THE EXCELLENT PRINCE HENRY THE FIFTE, AT THE BATTELL OF AGINCOURT The list is the complete index of the Battle of Agincourt Honor Roll. The listings comprise about 1,200 names of the 5,700 participants. The names are also a good demonstration of the adoption of surnames in England. The majority have conventional names but a few have "de" (meaning "of"), some of the last vestiges of identifying people from their place of origin.
In 1415, Henry V sailed to France for a season of campaigning. After a successful but long siege of Harfleur, he decided to march through the French countryside to Calais before returning to England. In spite of the political turmoil in France, various nobles marshalled their forces to block Henry's march north. On 11 August 1415, Henry V, the English king for two years, set sail for France with an army to substantiate his claim to the French Throne. His plan was to take Harfleur as a bridgehead before marching down the Seine to Paris and Bordeaux. There are a number of possible reasons for this campaign. It was an attempt not only to reclaim what Henry believed to be his lawful birthrights, the Duchy of Normandy and the French Throne, but also as a means of securing his reign by diverting attention from the problems at home. Henry V of England is informed of the Southampton Plot against him; he has the leaders arrested and executed before invading France during the summer of 1415.
Contemporary observers describe a fleet of 1500 ships that carried Henry's army across the channel. A fleet this size being many times larger than England's standing navy, it must have been an impressive array in order to carry a force of 8000 archers and 2000 men-at-arms together with artillery, horses, baggage train and camp followers. They landed unopposed on 14 August, three miles west of Harfleur. Harfleur was a strongly fortified town with strong walls, 26 towers, a moat, three barbicans (fortified gateways with drawbridges) defended by several hundred men-at-arms. The French proved adept at countermining forcing the English to rely on artillery for their attack.
Harfleur finally surrendered on the 22nd September which according to the laws of war, saved it from sacking. In the process, however, Henry had lost over one third of his army and many of the survivors were sick. He decided the best way to "show the flag" was to feign battle with the gathering French army before outmarching them to Calais, 120 miles away. Abandoning the artillery and baggage train, Henry placed The Earl of Dorset in command of Harfleur with a force of up to 500 men-at-arms and 1000 archers. He left on the 8th October with a force of about 900 men-at-arms and 5000 archers carrying only eight days provisions. The advance guard was commanded by Sir Gilbert Umfraville and Sir John Cornwall, the main body by Henry himself, the Duke of Gloucester and the Earl of Huntington while the rear guard was commanded by the Duke of York and the Earl of Oxford. They found the Bethune river flooded and were forced to march upstream in search of a ford which they crossed on the 11th. The following day, they crossed the Breste having marched 80 miles in five days. On the 13th, they swung inland to cross the Somme above its mouth but discovered from a prisoner that a French force numbering 6000 blocked the crossing. Turning southeast, in search of a crossing, they marched for five days, becoming hungrier and hungrier before managing to cross the Somme at Bellencourt and Voyenes where a French cavalry attack was beaten off. All the time, the French kept pace. After crossing on the 19th, Henry declared the 20th a rest day that saw the arrival of French heralds to issue a challenge for battle. Late on the 24th, the Duke of York's scouts informed Henry that the main French army had crossed their path and blocked the way to Calais. He offered to return Harfleur and pay for damages in return for free and safe passage to Calais. The French, however, demanded that he also renounce all claims to French soil apart from Guyene. Prisoners who had been taken during the campaign were released on oath that they would return if God granted Henry and the English victory in battle.
The Road to Agincourt
Henry left Harfleur on 8 October, 1415, with the force carrying eight days' rations. The plan was to march directly to Calais, and sail back to England from there. Henry's advisers unanimously recommended against this, but Henry overruled them. Among other things, Henry probably hoped to escape the dysentery epidemic that was raging in Harfleur. The risks were considerable, as Constable d'Albret was known to be gathering a large force at Rouen. Things went reasonably well until they reached the river Somme. They had planned to cross just below Abbeville, but there two problems with this. First, the river was flooded, making the ford very dangerous. Second, there was a large French force waiting on the other side. Henry marched upstream, looking for a safer ford, but be didn't find one until 18 October, at Nesle. By this time, the army was in pretty bad shape. Not only were rations low, but the epidemic had come along with them. d'Albret harassed the English for six more days. On 24 October, the English camped at Maisoncelles, and scouts reported that a very large French force was camped on the road to Calais.
The English had marched 260 miles in 17 days, and they were not in good shape. Henry ordered total silence in the camp, so that everybody to get a good night's sleep. They were so quiet that some of the French thought that they had snuck away in the night. Ten weeks previously, England’s 26-year-old King Henry V had landed an expeditionary force in Normandy where he planned to take Harfleur on the Seine estuary before marching on Paris. Henry shared with his forefathers the ambition to add France to his domains; in fact England had been at war with France intermittently since 1340. Today we know this series of conflicts as the Hundred Year's War.
On 25 October 1415, the French forces blocked the road to Calais and challenged Henry to battle. The prospects for the English army camped around the village of Maisoncelles in northern France could hardly have seemed worse. The lines were drawn in some recently plowed fields between the villages of Agincourt and Tramecourt. English forces, weary and ill from the long march, were outnumbered by the French forces and appeared to be doomed. At first, the French waited; Henry ordered the English line to move forward to extreme longbow range and stop. The first round of arrows to strike the French ignited a calvary charge and the battle was joined. The calvary charge was blunted by concentrated English longbow firing, the muddy field, and wooden stakes the English archers had driven into the ground. The French nobles, knights, and men-at-arms advanced on foot towards the English infantry. By the time they reached the English line, most were exhausted by the struggle through the mud. The French ignored the English archers (who were firing constantly) so as to gain glory by defeating the English nobles. Those French men felled by arrows or pushed to the ground were helpless because their heavy armor kept them from standing. The English line held while the lightly-armored (thus nimble) archers killed prostrate French. The battle turned into a rout and the French departed the field.
The citizens of Harfleur were unimpressed with Henry’s ambitions and put up a spirited defense despite being heavily outnumbered. To add to this problem, the English besiegers were camped in swampland and disease ravaged the camp. After six weeks, Harfleur fell but at a serious cost. Of Henry’s original army of 10,000, 2,000 had died and a further 2,000 wounded and sick had to be returned to England. Henry realized he no longer had the strength to march on Paris and instead decided on a cheveauege, a march through enemy territory designed to annoy the enemy but avoid battle. He would take his remaining troops 100 miles along the coast to the English enclave of Calais at the narrowest point on the English Channel. The 5,700-man army expected to reach it quickly and took provisions for only seven days. Their route included just one obstacle, the River Somme, but on reaching it, they found French troops guarding the crossings, forcing them to march further inland to find a safe crossing. The locals were eager to help with advice, not out of support for Henry but because the last thing they wanted near their villages were several thousand hungry troops. Eventually an unguarded crossing was found. Unfortunately this involved a 50 mile diversion, doubling the time of the planned march. The journey was further slowed by heavy rains that turned the roads to mud. Once the Somme was safely crossed, the army continued its journey towards Calais. The consequences of the delay now became apparent. The army was short of food but worse, the French had managed to raise a huge army and assemble near the village of Agincourt, blocking the English path to Calais.
The French had the numbers and the confidence but they lacked the organization. France’s King Charles VI, weak and mentally ill, was quite unfit to lead his army, this role falling to Charles D’Albert, Constable of France, and Boucicault, the Marshal. Both were experienced soldiers, but their rank was not considered high enough to deserve respect from the snobbish French nobles who largely ignored their commands. Sources vary greatly on the size of the French army: the lowest estimates put it at 30,000 but figures as high as 150,000 are quoted, the lower estimates are probably closer to the truth. Henry tried to avoid battle, offering to return Harfleur and the prisoners taken there. The French replied in addition he must renounce his claim to the French throne in order to pass unharmed. This Henry refused to do and battle became inevitable. The French, supremely confident of victory on the following day because of their enormous numerical superiority, spent the night carousing, taunting the English across the lines and dicing for the captives they were sure they would take. To offset their miserable condition, the English had a number of things in their favor. Henry had planned his expedition carefully and his army was not typical of the times. Throughout Europe it was normal for an army to be made up of a number of knights, who regarded warfare as almost sport, and as many peasants as the local feudal levy could raise. In contrast, Henry’s army was specially recruited; his men were well paid, well trained and disciplined. Most of his army comprised expert archers using the English longbow. Henry preferred a small, professional army to a large untrained force. In addition, Henry was a charismatic commander, popular with his men and able to motivate his troops. One of the most famous speeches in Shakespeare’s plays is Henry’s address to his men prior to the battle.
The huge French army had chosen the field of battle poorly. Near Agincourt the road to Calais passed between two thick forests, 1,300 yards apart at the northern (French) end but narrowing towards the English lines. Henry arranged his troops carefully with his archers taking up positions on the flanks and between the men-at-arms. Despite the French advantage in numbers, they refused to attack. At 11 o’clock on what was St Crispin’s Day, Henry, tired of waiting, gave the order “In the name of God Almighty and of Saint George, Avount Banner in the best of the year, and Saint George this day be thine help”. With a cry of “Hurrah! Hurrah! Saint George and Merrie England” the English advanced to within 300 yards of the French lines. There they planted sharpened stakes angled to check any cavalry charge. When this was done, they loosed the first of their arrows.
In the longbow, the English had perfected an extraordinary weapon. A trained archer could shoot six aimed arrows a minute which could wound at 400 yards, kill at 200 and penetrate armor at 100 yards. The English had separate arrowheads for penetrating armor while others were designed to kill or maim horses. The French had arranged themselves in three dense lines flanked by the forests; in fact they were so crowded that their crossbows and cannons could not be fired effectively. Despite these problems, the French charged. The knights were forced into each other by the narrowing front formed by the two forests: the converging mass made movement very difficult. As the heavily armored knights advanced, they turned the rain-saturated ground into deep mud; all but the first ranks slipped and stumbled. The front ranks of the French cavalry who were able to advance received the full effect of English archers. Even as the front ranks were killed by the deadly hail of arrows, the cavalry behind, unaware of what was happening up ahead, pressed forward through the mud, piling up on the dead and wounded at their front. Those who did reach the front had to climb a wall of dead and dying men and horses before they in turn were slain. Taking advantage of this confusion, the English slung their bows and laid into the confused mass with their swords.
The French sent in a second wave, crushing their own men. The English grabbed some 1,700 prisoners from the mess — rich pickings in an age when noble prisoners could yield a substantial ransom and sent them to the rear to be guarded with the baggage train. The local French villagers, loath not to profit from the events of the day, took advantage of the poorly guarded baggage train to help themselves to whatever they could find. When Henry learned of this disturbance, he took it as an attack from the rear and ordered that the prisoners be killed to prevent their escape. Henry had to withdraw 200 archers from the battle to threaten his own men. The slaughter began and only ceased when the truth became known. But by this time most of the prisoners had been killed, only the most illustrious were spared. As the battle progressed, the French became aware of the scale of the disaster. As the word spread the French army started to slip away into the countryside and this quickly became a rout. One of the few consolations for the French was that the English were too tired and too few in numbers to make chase.
Figures vary greatly for the English losses. Shakespeare gives the English dead as four nobles and 25 regular troops. Some estimates go as high as 500 or even 1,000 but the most widely accepted figure is 100-200 English dead. French losses are better known; the French themselves estimated these at between 8,000 and 11,000 of whom 1,200-1,800 were slaughtered prisoners. A generation of French nobles had been destroyed: there was hardly a French noble family who did not lose someone and countless family lines came to the end on the field of battle. The English troops collected so much loot on the battlefield that the army simply could not move. Henry ordered almost all of it to be placed in a local barn along with the English dead and this was then set ablaze.
Henry, a deeply religious man, refused to accept credit for the victory, ascribing it to God alone. The immediate consequences were excellent for the English. Although the army returned to England, further expeditionary forces won battle after battle until in 1420 Charles VI agreed that on his death Henry would acquire the title King of France and gave his daughter Catherine in marriage to Henry. But the glory did not last. Henry died of dysentery in 1422. A few years later France produced her own hero, Joan of Arc, who began the reverse of English fortunes, eventually leading to the loss of all Henry’s territories in France except Calais. The English longbowmen certainly played a major role but the primary reason the French were defeated was their lack of a unified command. The French were provoked into an attack on unfavorable terms and no commander on the field had the ability to stop the charge. The English won the day; the French eventually won the war and expelled the English from France.
The Trip to CalaisOne of the main reason for joining the expeditionary force was the possibility of loot. While many prisoners had been killed, the highest ranking (and most valuable) were spared. At first, the soldiers were overjoyed with the quantity of arms and armor stripped from fallen Frenchmen. Unfortunately, arms and armor are heavy, and many picked up more than they could carry. Remember, they still were sick and very short of food, and now they had prisoners to feed. Henry, of course, was not short of food. He forced the prisoners to wait on him at his table; they were not pleased. The citizens of Calais were also rather less than enthusiastic. Most of the yeomans' captured armor and prisoners went to pay for food and lodging.