Henry V

by Teresa Cole

  Somewhere, though again accounts are vague about where, were positioned the elite force of cavalry envisaged by the original plan. The chaplain describes ‘squadrons of horsemen in many hundreds on either side of their front line’, though others placed them further back. Indeed, whether this was one group or two, or, by the time the action started, any kind of group at all, has been the subject of much speculation.

  By first light both the English and French had taken up their positions facing each other maybe a little under three-quarters of a mile apart. Now the king appeared, fully armoured and provocatively wearing a surcoat emblazoned with the arms of England and France. We are told he rode a small, grey horse and passed up and down the line of his men, reassuring and encouraging them. He told them his cause was just, so their consciences would be clear when they engaged in battle. He reminded them of previous English victories against the odds, of their fathers, mothers, wives and children in England looking to them to uphold the honour and glory of crown and country. He told them he would never be taken prisoner to charge England with his ransom, and he claimed the French had boasted that they would cut off two fingers from the right hand of every English archer so they could never draw a bow again. This last seems to have been pure invention but had the right effect of inducing outrage in the men concerned. It has also been credited as the origin of the two-fingered salute, so much a feature of English defiance to this day.

  There was one more formality necessary to satisfy the complicated etiquette of medieval battles. Heralds from each side had to meet together to make at least a show of final negotiation to avoid bloodshed. All manner of claims have been made for this meeting. In particular it has been suggested that Henry offered to give up all claims to France and to hand back Harfleur if he and his men would be allowed free passage to Calais. In view of all his preparations and the rousing of his men this seems extremely unlikely, and, since the meeting took place well away from both forces, in fact no one knows what was said on either side.

  Now the king dismounted and all the horses were sent to the rear, where the baggage train had already moved up closer to reduce its vulnerability to attack. Taking his place in the centre, surrounded by his banners of St George, Edward the Confessor, the Trinity and his own personal arms quartering the lions of England with the fleur-de-lis of France, King Henry now donned his great helm, over which had been placed a golden crown studded with precious jewels and fleurs-de-lis.

  Although one account claims there were two decoys dressed in similar fashion to the king, it seems fairly clear that Henry stood out among his bedraggled band like a peacock among geese. Indeed his wearing of the fleur-de-lis was seen as so provocative that one group of eighteen Burgundian esquires vowed together that they would between them strike the crown from his head or die in the attempt. They achieved at least the latter part of their wish, all of them perishing in the battle, but not before one had got in a blow that cut off part of the crown.

  That was later, though. Now, in the cold, damp early morning, with both sides armed and ready – nothing happened. For two, three, some accounts say four hours the English stood braced and ready for an attack that did not come. On the French side things were a little more relaxed. They had, after all, food, numbers of men and time on their side, all of which the English lacked. Conventional military wisdom of the time said the side which attacked first invariably lost, so the French remained where they were, letting hunger and fear work their effect on their opponents. They had no need to go to the English. Let the English come to them.

  It may be that Henry realised the long wait was eating away at his men’s morale, or equally he may simply have decided on a change of tactics. His scouts had no doubt reported the sodden nature of the surface of the battlefield. To charge some thousand yards across that would be disastrous, but he had a weapon that could be used at long range to make the enemy come to him. It was a risk but, as so often with this king, a calculated risk.

  At last the order was given: ‘In the name of Almighty God and St George. Banners advance.’ (Though one account gives the rather more down-to-earth ‘Fellas, let’s go.’) At this each man knelt and kissed the ground, taking a morsel of soil into his mouth. This invariable ritual was performed partly in remembrance of the holy sacrament received in the Eucharist at the Mass, and partly as a reminder of the warning delivered each Ash Wednesday, ‘Remember man that thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return.’ Then, in full battle formation, they advanced up the field some seven hundred yards to a new position.

  This was the time of greatest danger. It is unclear whether or not the archers had deployed their sharpened stakes in their original position, but it seems probable. If so they would have had to pull them out and carry them forward to the new line. A cavalry charge now would surely have had the effect the French intended but none came. The enemy were taken completely by surprise and before they had thought about it the ground had been covered, the archers had hammered in their stakes again and the opportunity was lost.

  Now, when all was ready, Sir Thomas Erpingham, in command of the archers, threw his baton in the air and shouted a word most commonly given as ‘Nestrocque’ as a signal to loose their arrows. What he actually said is open to dispute (and some accounts place this earlier, at the time of the advance). Since he was a Norfolk man, some have translated this as ‘Now strike’, delivered in a fine East Anglian accent. Others claim it was ‘Knee stretch’, a signal to the archers to bend their knees to shoot, which seems unlikely since archers do not shoot with bended knees. In one manuscript, attributed to the Burgundian chronicler Monstrelet, writing in the 1440s, the word is given as ‘Nescieque’, which seems strikingly similar to the Latin ‘nescio quid’, meaning ‘I don’t know what’ (he said), and maybe that is as close as we will get to the truth. Whatever it was, he was clearly understood by his archers and a moment later some five thousand arrows darkened the sky on their way into the midst of the French host. Battle had commenced.

  It seems clear that the French elite cavalry were not at their posts when needed. The suggestion is that after the long wait many had dismounted and their horses were being exercised to keep warm somewhere at the rear of the host. The French chronicles were quick to accuse them of cowardice.

  When the call came, only about half the original number could be assembled for the charge. Nor could they carry out their rapid flanking movement into the side of the body of archers. The English now occupied the narrowest part of the field with woods on each side, while the heavy overnight rain had turned the freshly cultivated land into thick mud. Even a willing horse could not gallop at speed over such a surface, and now they were charging head-on into a hail of arrows.

  The charge must have proceeded with nightmare slowness while large numbers of horses and riders fell wounded and dying under the arrow storm. Nor could they get at the archers through the hedge of sharpened stakes. One of the leaders cried that the stakes would fall down in the soft mud, but when he charged on he proved to his cost that they did not. Very few followed him. Soon the field was full of fleeing, terrified horses, some wounded, many riderless, all trying to escape the murderous flights of arrows, and many charging straight back into the oncoming mass of the French army.

  In accordance with the battle plan the start of the cavalry charge was the signal for the vanguard to advance, but they found the going even more difficult. Carrying roughly their own body weight in armour, slipping, tripping, sinking into the soft mud by some accounts almost up to their knees, avoiding living and dead horses and their own fallen comrades, the advance must have been a crawl. Anyone who has crossed a sodden ploughed field in wellingtons will have some idea of the impossibility of maintaining any kind of pace. Nor could they see well where they were going. With visors closed and heads down against the continuing flights of arrows, vision was extremely limited.

  Hundreds never made it to the English lines, going down like corn before a scythe, but there were thousands more behind pushing
them on. The chaplain, sitting on his horse with the baggage train at the rear, describes the moment when they crashed into the English front row, with ‘such a fierce impact that they were compelled to fall back for almost the distance of a lance’. This was the crucial time. If the fragile English line had broken then they would have been quickly overwhelmed. Instead they held, recovered and fought back against the mass of their enemies, while the archers continued pouring arrows into the flanks of the attackers, their bodkin arrows being even more effective at close range.

  Now the French discovered the disadvantage of their numbers. Channelled into three columns by the archers and by their desire to get at the English leaders under their banners, they were crammed together and pushed ever forward by those coming behind. In the brutal melee that now developed there was barely room to raise a weapon at all, and many of those who fell were simply knocked over in the slippery ground and, unable to rise again, suffocated in the crush. ‘Living fell on the dead, and others falling on the living were killed in turn.’

  Still, the chaplain tells us, the battle was ‘continually renewing’ and the fighting was intense. On foot alongside his men-at-arms, the king fought as valiantly as any. Having deliberately made himself a target he was often in the thickest of the fighting, losing a fleur-de-lis from his crown and receiving a great dent in his helmet in the process. His brother Humphrey was getting his first taste of battle alongside the king. At one point he was wounded in the groin and we are told Henry stood astride his body, fighting off his attackers, until he could be dragged to safety behind the lines.

  As the archers ran out of arrows they emerged to join in the slaughter. Some with daggers and the leaded mallets earlier used to drive in their stakes quickly dispatched the fallen, while others took up axes, swords and lances from the many lying abandoned and fell upon those still engaging in the fight.

  Fifteenth-century depictions of the battle tend to show a rather gentlemanly encounter of individual combat, clean death and prisoners calmly surrendering and being led away. There was, in fact, an etiquette about this, as there was for all aspects of medieval battle. The person surrendering should identify himself to his captor, say, ‘I yield myself to you’, and give him some token such as a glove. It was then the captor’s responsibility to remove the prisoner from the field of battle and guard him from all harm. At Agincourt, however, as the chaplain duly noted, ‘No one had time to receive them as captives.’ Almost all were killed ‘without distinction of person’. Indeed, the Duke of Alençon, attempting to surrender himself to Henry in the correct manner, was at that moment struck down and killed by another soldier, possibly one of Henry’s bodyguard.

  For two to three hours by most accounts the battle raged. This may be an exaggeration, but no doubt it took some considerable time for the English forces to fight their way through the vanguard and the main bulk of the French army. In the three places where the attack was most concentrated, the chaplain tells us, ‘piles of dead and those crushed in between grew so much that our men climbed on these heaps … and slew those below with swords, axes and other weapons’. It is suggested the piles of bodies were stacked higher than a man, though this seems scarcely credible.

  At last, though, there was a lull. The remnants of the two French battles were scattered and fled, and the English began the grisly but potentially profitable task of sorting through the heaps ‘to separate the living from the dead’. It was at this point that numbers of prisoners could be taken, and even lowly men-at-arms and archers could anticipate some return for all their endeavours.

  While this was happening, however, a cry went up that the French rearguard cavalry was reforming in great numbers and preparing to charge again. This may possibly have been the late arrival of Antoine, Duke of Brabant, younger brother of John the Fearless. Slow in reaching the area and hearing that the battle had begun without him, he is said to have spurred ahead of the bulk of his men, borrowed some armour from his chamberlain, wrapped a pennon bearing his arms around his neck and charged to his death. Whether in fact it was he or, as other accounts suggest, the original cavalry leaders attempting to reopen hostilities, this together with some sort of raid on the baggage train at the same time led to one of the more infamous incidents of the day. The king gave the order to kill all the prisoners.

  This was against all the rules of chivalry and caused outcry at the time – not because unarmed prisoners were killed, but because the nobility were massacred along with the lower classes. The military imperative, however, is understandable. Henry’s men were exhausted. In front of them an unknown number of the enemy, mounted and unmounted, were regrouping. Behind them large numbers of prisoners were also gathered, while weapons were lying freely all around. The risk that, even at this late stage, they might be trapped between two hostile forces was not one the king was prepared to take. Accounts differ about how and by whom and even how many of the prisoners were killed. The traditional view is that, apart from a few of the highest rank, killed they were, ‘lest the captives should be our ruin in the coming battle’.

  In fact the ‘battle’ came to nothing. The more prudent of the archers had no doubt taken the opportunity to resupply themselves with arrows from the many thousands discharged earlier, and this last cavalry charge of maybe six hundred men met the same hail of steel as their predecessors and rapidly fled. Nor did the raid on the baggage train turn out to be more than local pillagers helping themselves to the king’s money, jewels, sword of state and even a crown. These two groups, however, rapidly became French scapegoats, blamed by their countrymen for causing the deaths of the prisoners killed in response to their actions.

  One final act was needed. Heralds from each side had watched the battle in the role of impartial observers. Henry now summoned the senior French herald, Montjoie, and formally asked of him whether the King of England or the King of France had achieved victory in this full-scale trial by battle. He was told that victory was undoubtedly his. He then demanded the name of the castle visible through the trees, for all battles should bear the name of their location. Being given the name he declared, ‘This battle will now and for ever be known as the battle of Agincourt.’

  9

  INTERLUDE

  26 OCTOBER 1415 – AUGUST 1417

  There is no way of knowing exactly how many were killed at Agincourt. The heralds, whose job it was to number and name the dead, were concerned only with those of rank. Nobody bothered to count the common soldiers. What is clear though is that the French army, which massively outnumbered the English when living, similarly massively outnumbered them among the dead.

  Estimates of French losses have varied from four to eleven thousand. Our English chaplain suggests 1,600 nobles and knights and four to five thousand esquires lost their lives. The meticulous Burgundian chronicler Enguerrand de Monstrelet, writing in the 1440s, records some three hundred names before giving up and admitting ‘one cannot know how to record them all, because there were too many of them’.

  Nor is it just in sheer numbers that the list is impressive. It reads like a roll call of French nobility. Three royal dukes (Alençon, Bar and Brabant) went to their deaths along with at least eight counts and an archbishop (presumably a throwback to the old days of militant priests), the constable, d’Albret, an admiral, the grand master and the steward of the king’s household, and the grand master of the crossbowmen. Guillaume de Martel, bearer of the sacred oriflamme, also perished and that banner was lost never to reappear, no doubt trampled and torn to pieces in the mud of Agincourt.

  The local area was almost completely despoiled of its lesser nobility, while from across France fathers, sons and brothers died together. John the Fearless lost both brothers. The master of crossbowmen died with three out of his five sons.

  Many more were never identified. They were too disfigured, or came from far away and none of their fellows were left to claim them. The right of the victors to strip everything of value from the slain complicated things. Once arms and armour
were removed the dead had a terrible likeness, and this stripping began immediately after the battle. Indeed, so thoroughly was this plundering carried out that Henry made an order that no one was to take more weapons and armour than he could personally bear. All the rest was piled into a nearby barn and set alight. There was no knowing how many of the enemy were still in the neighbourhood and there were enough weapons around literally to supply an army.

  When the rain began again the English retired to Maisoncelles for the night, carrying with them not only their plunder and prisoners, but also provisions left behind by the French to give them a first decent meal for days. Then it was the turn of the locals to pick over the battlefield so that by the next day it is recorded that the slain were left ‘as naked as the day they were born’. Nevertheless, so great were the heaps of bodies that even two days later some were still being found alive – though none of these survived for much longer.

  By contrast the English casualty list, though similarly incomplete, was tiny. Estimates range from one hundred to five hundred, with most agreeing that the lower end was more likely. Only a handful were thought worth naming and the chief of these was Edward, Duke of York. The story that he was old and fat and died of overexertion was invented over a century later. In fact he was in his early forties and had been all his life an enthusiastic huntsman, contributing five detailed chapters of his own to an English translation of a treatise on that ancient sport. If, as some suggest, he suffocated, it would have been for the same reason as many others on that day, for his wing of the battle was a centre of the fiercest fighting and suffered proportionately higher losses than any other. His body was apparently retrieved from a great pile of corpses at that place.