1415 Agincourt

A New History

Anne Curry

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780750964869
• eBook ISBN: 9780750966634
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: History

As night fell in Picardy on Thursday 24 October 1415, Henry V and his English troops, worn down by their long march in search of a crossing of the Somme, can only have dreamt that the battle of the next day would be remembered as one of the most momentous victories ever won.

Six hundred years down the line, the battle of Agincourt still rings through the centuries. In this stupendous victory English and Welsh archers who formed the bulk of Henry's army prevailed against large numbers of French men-at-arms and cavalry.

This startling and revisionist history recreates the campaign and battle from the perspectives of the English. Acclaimed as one of the best battle accounts ever published, Anne Curry has updated her classic work in honour of the 600th anniversary of Agincourt.

1

Henry V’s Inheritance: England and France, 1399–1413

Henry V had called himself ‘king of France’ ever since his accession to the English throne on 21 March 1413. At the battle of Agincourt his surcoat bore the quartered arms of England and France and his helmet was encircled with a crown bearing the insignia of both kingdoms. Men from nearby Hesdin who pillaged his baggage during the heat of battle found two crowns, one to wear when appearing before the people of France, and the other with which to be crowned at the traditional crowning place of Reims.1 The claim of English kings to the throne of France dates back to Henry’s great-grandfather, Edward III, who started the Hundred Years’ War by declaring himself king of France in 1340, as the rightful heir, albeit through the female line, to the late king, Charles IV.2 Historians have long debated whether Edward was serious about acquiring this throne. Although he made for Reims with a crown in his baggage in 1359, in the following year he came to a treaty with the French king, John II, who was already in English captivity after his capture at the battle of Poitiers in 1356. The treaty of Brétigny of 1360, which became known as the Great Peace, gave Edward an enlarged Guienne (the great duchy of Aquitaine with its capital at Bordeaux), Poitou (the county based on Poitiers), Ponthieu (the county to the north of the Somme estuary) and the march of Calais in full sovereignty. In return, he agreed to stop calling himself king of France. It appears therefore that Edward had simply used his claim to the French throne to expand the extent and independence of the lands of English kings in France, the southern parts of which had been held since the marriage of Henry II to Eleanor of Aquitaine on condition of homage being paid to the French king. Ponthieu had come into English hands through the inheritance of Edward I’s queen in 1279. Edward III had taken Calais in 1347. Edward might have asked for more in this Great Peace. In the negotiations of 1358–59 he had demanded other lands held by English kings in the past: Normandy, whose link went back to 1066, and Anjou, Maine and Touraine, which were also part of Henry II’s Angevin ‘empire’. These had all been lost in the reign of John, but there was still a strong remembrance of their tenure.

By the time Henry was born in 1386,3 the Great Peace had failed. Charles V had reopened the war in 1369 and his armies had quickly reduced the English to holding the coastal areas of Guienne, with an inland projection down the rivers Dordogne and Garonne, and the Calais march. Edward III retaliated by resuming the title ‘king of France’. At his death in 1377, the title and claim passed to his grandson, Richard II, but the English found it impossible to recover their position. The last campaign occurred in 1388. In 1396 a long truce was agreed, to last until 1426, symptomatic of the impasse that had been reached. The truce was further cemented by the marriage of Richard to Charles VI’s six-year-old daughter, Isabella. There things might have remained, and we would have all been writing books about the ‘Sixty Years’ War’. Likewise, Henry V’s life could have turned out quite differently. At the sealing of the long truce he was simply the young lord Henry, the nine-year-old son of Henry Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby and Hereford, and grandson of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, third son of Edward III. He would have grown up to enjoy a typical noble lifestyle, much as his father had done, although had the long truce endured and led to permanent peace, his opportunities for military service in France would have been more limited. But neither were to be. In September 1399 Bolingbroke deposed Richard II. Henry was now Prince Henry, heir to the crown of England as well as a putative crown of France. Henry IV immediately bestowed on his son not only the traditional titles of Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester and Duke of Cornwall, but also Duke of Guienne. There were immediate plans to send the prince to Guienne at the nominal head of an army, but parliament advised that he should not leave the country ‘at such a tender age until peace had been more securely established within the kingdom’.4

Prince Henry never did cross to France. There were repeated conspiracies against Henry IV in England, difficulties with the Scots, revolt and long-term war in Wales, and financial problems – all stemming at base from the fact of usurpation. At Epiphany 1400, leading nobles plotted to kill Henry and his sons. The new king’s response was savage and swift, as it was throughout his reign. On this occasion it led to the execution of several leading nobles and the murder of the deposed king. In 1403 it was Henry’s erstwhile friends, the Percys, who rebelled and whom he defeated in the bloody battle of Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403, at which the prince was wounded in the face by an arrow. Two years later, threats of revolt in the north led the king to execute Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York. In 1408, further rebellion brought the death of the Earl of Northumberland. The possibility of rival claims to the throne was never completely removed, as Henry V was to discover as he prepared to set sail in 1415.

As prince, he grew up in a context of insecurity and militarism. A whole book could be written on his military apprenticeship, but a few salient points must be emphasised here. Although warfare was a challenge to any king, it was also an extremely significant way of enforcing royal will and generating a practical demonstration of loyalty. Just as Henry V was to use this mechanism as king, through a massive invasion of France in 1415, so his father did the same within the first year of his own reign with an expedition against the Scots, who had taken advantage of the disarray caused by Richard’s deposition to invade Northumberland, affronting the king by addressing him as ‘Duke of Lancaster’.5 The army that Henry IV raised, numbering at least 13,085, was one of the largest ever assembled in late-medieval England, larger than for Henry V’s invasions of France in both 1415 and 1417. It called on the service of the nobility, knights and gentry, invoking their obligation to support the crown. This was therefore a very effective way of imposing and testing the rule of a new and disputed king, and for Henry to achieve immediate success. Faced with such military strength, the Scots not surprisingly chose to negotiate.

The expedition of 1400 also reveals how well developed the English military system and the royal powers of calling men to arms were. Should either Henry IV or his son wish to make a big showing in France, then there was no doubting the existence of a strong infrastructure and ample supply of manpower especially through the nobility, issues to which we shall return in Chapter 3. Furthermore, the royal family and household was central to the army of 1400 and to all of Henry IV’s military endeavours. Many of these men, such as Sir Thomas Erpingham, continued in service to Agincourt and beyond. Although there is some uncertainty over the actual participation of Prince Henry in the campaign to Scotland, we do know that he was allocated a company of seventeen men-at-arms and ninety-nine archers.6 When he was first appointed royal lieutenant in Wales in March 1403, the army assigned to him (although he was still under the tutelage of others) consisted of 500 men-at-arms and 2,500 archers. His real military independence came in January 1406, when he was assigned 1,100 men-at-arms and 3,800 archers for Wales.7 These armies were intended for use in the field as well as to reinforce garrisons. The Welsh wars were a major contributor to the financial difficulties faced by Henry IV. They also had a direct impact on Prince Henry, in a way which previsaged problems faced in launching the 1415 expedition. In late May 1403, for example, the prince wrote to his father to explain how he had had to pawn his jewels to pay the troops, and how food for horses was in such short supply in Wales that his men had been forced to carry oats with them.8

ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS 1399–1407

With so much going on within the British Isles, it is easy to overlook Henry IV’s concern for his French interests. It is clear, however, that he was equally determined to maintain his rights there and to extend them, should circumstances permit. The claim to the French crown was an important element of his legitimacy as king of England. Although he was never to cross to France during his reign, despite several plans to do so, his involvement in Anglo-French affairs was considerable, and the policies developed over his reign paved the way for those of his son. At the time of his accession, Henry IV may have anticipated that France would be his major headache, since there was a danger that the French would use his usurpation as an excuse to restart conflict. At first they rejected his approaches to confirm the state of truce, but there was a constraint on their actions since they needed to negotiate the return of Richard’s widow, Isabella, to France. They refused to contemplate Henry IV’s proposal that she should be married instead to the Prince of Wales. Had they agreed, there might have been no invasion in 1415! The French never acknowledged Henry IV as king of England, but confirmed the truce in June 1400 by agreeing that it had been made between the kingdoms and peoples of England and France and not between Charles and Richard as individuals.9 Even so, they remained reluctant to hold meetings to settle infringements of the truce, which were increasing daily, especially at sea, until forced to do so by Henry’s delaying of Isabella’s return (and with her the repayment of part of her dowry). On 31 July 1401 the young queen was given back to the French.

The years that followed saw a ‘cold war’. The French stirred up trouble for the English wherever and however they could, by symbols and by actions, while always stopping short of formally reopening the war. When the Dauphin Charles died aged nine in January 1401, his next brother, Louis (b.1397), then aged nearly four, was made Dauphin and also Duc de Guienne. It is by this latter title that he is referred to in most chronicles of the period, including those of the time of Agincourt, although he was not, despite Shakespeare, present at the battle. His elevation was intended as a deliberate slight to the English. It certainly made the parliament of the spring of 1401 fearful that the French were about to invade the duchy.10 In response, on 5 July 1401 Henry IV appointed his cousin, Edward, Earl of Rutland (b.1373), as lieutenant in Guienne for three years, with a retinue of 100 men-at-arms and 1,000 archers.11 Rutland became Duke of York in 1402 at the death of his father, Edmund of Langley, the last surviving son of Edward III. He played a prominent role in the Welsh campaigns alongside Prince Henry, who supported him even when the king had suspicions of his loyalty. He continued to play a prominent military role after 1413 and was the leading English peer killed at the battle of Agincourt.12 English authority was restored in Guienne by the end of 1401, but there were continuing pressures on the frontiers, especially in Périgord which Charles VI had granted to his brother, Louis, Duke of Orléans. Although Louis had been a supporter of Bolingbroke when the latter had been exiled by Richard II, he had turned into his bitter enemy after the usurpation. Orléans was certainly behind an incursion into Guienne in October 1403 led by himself, the Count of Alençon (b.1385) and Charles, Sire d’Albret (b.1369), who had been constable since 1403. The two last-named met their end at Agincourt after many years of military experience.

This was a breach of the truce, but was one of many hostile acts against the English in the first years of Henry IV’s reign. The French had continued in alliance with the Scots, sending armed support in 1402 under Jacques de Heilly. He was subsequently captured by the Percys, and was the subject of a dispute between them and Henry IV, which contributed to their revolt in 1403. De Heilly was subsequently imprisoned in Wisbech (Cambs.) until he broke prison. He was to fight against the English again in Guienne in 1413 and also in the Agincourt campaign.13 From the time of Richard’s deposition, English shipping found itself under constant attack from French-condoned acts of piracy, many of which were launched from Harfleur. In July 1404 the French even went so far as to recognise Owen Glendower as Prince of Wales and came to an alliance with him against their common enemy, ‘Henry of Lancaster’.14

This was part of French plans to reopen the war on a larger scale. An estimate was drawn up of how much it would cost to fight against the English in Guienne, Calais and at sea.15 Over the next two years, there was a pattern of attack and counter-attack. For instance, Waleran de Luxembourg, Count of Saint-Pol, who had married Richard II’s half-sister, Margaret Holland, attacked Marck in the Calais march, and the English retaliated with an attack on Sluys. At sea they went on the offensive under the nominal command of Prince Thomas, later Duke of Clarence, making a landing at St-Vaast-la-Hougue on the eastern tip of the Cotentin, with burning and pillaging conducted thirty miles inland.16 The French landed troops at Milford H...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Preface to the 2015 Edition
• Introduction
• 1 Henry V’s Inheritance: England and France, 1399–1413
• 2 Henry V and the Reopening of War, March 1413–August 1415
• 3 The Raising of Henry V’s Army, April–August 1415
• 4 The Siege of Harfleur, 13 August–22 September 1415
• 5 To Fight or Not to Fight, 22 September–8 October 1415
• 6 From Harfleur to the Crossing of the Somme, 8–19 October 1415
• 7 From the Crossing of the Somme to the Eve of Battle, 19–24 October 1415
• 8 The Armies Assemble, 24–25 October 1415
• 9 The Fight, 25 October 1415
• 10 The Aftermath, 26 October–16 November 1415
• Epilogue: Battle or Murder?
• Notes
• Appendix A: Distances on the March
• Appendix B: Army Sizes According to the Chroniclers
• Appendix C: Numbers of Dead and Prisoners According to the Chronicles
• Maps and Genealogical Tables
• Bibliography
• List of Illustrations and Figures
• Plates