The Battle of Agincourt: The History and Legacy of the Hundred Years’ War’s Most Famous Battle

Although it ended over 550 years ago, the Hundred Years’ War still looms large in the historical consciousness of England and France, even if the name of the famous war is a misnomer. Actually a series of separate conflicts between the English and French monarchies, interspersed with periods of peace, its historical image is an odd one, in part because its origins were based on royal claims that dated back centuries and the English and French remained adversaries for nearly 400 years after it ended. That said, the war was transformative in many respects, and the impact it had on the geopolitical situation of Europe cannot be overstated. While some might think of the war as being a continuation of the feudal tradition of knights and peasants, the Hundred Years’ War revolutionized Western European warfare, and it truly helped to usher in the concept of nationalism on the continent. In England, it is remembered as a period of grandeur and success, even though the English lost the war and huge swathes of territory with it, while the French remember it as a strategic victory that ensured the continued independence of France and the denial of English hegemony. The legacy of the war has lived on ever since, helping determine how England became politically severed from the continent, how the knightly chivalric tradition slid into irrelevance, and how battlefield dominance can still leave a nation a loser in war. The village of Agincourt (Azincourt in French) is located in the Pas-de-Calais, around 50 miles south of Calais near the French border with Belgium. It has a population of around 300 and, but for one event, would otherwise be an obscure French settlement. Of course, that one event was the Hundred Years’ War’s most famous battle, the Battle of Agincourt, which served as a fine representative of all the changing trends in warfare and geopolitics in France. By the time the two sides fought at Agincourt, archers formed a special part of the English army, beneath the men-at-arms but above the ordinary infantry. They wore leather body armor, sometimes with metal plates, and helmets or chainmail hoods. For close combat, they carried swords, mallets and daggers, including the misericord, a special type of dagger designed to slip between the armor plates of a fallen enemy and finish him off. The glory days of the heavily armored mounted knight had long since passed, and at Crecy and Agincourt, English longbowmen and men-at-arms would decimate the flower of French chivalry, rendering the medieval cavalry charge little more than a romantic folly. Agincourt was a hard-fought battle, and Henry V at one point ordered prisoners executed to avoid allowing them to be rescued, but in the end the English won a decisive victory, taking 1,500 prisoners and marching on safely to Calais. However, while the victory at Agincourt consolidated the English position in 1415, to a large degree it made little strategic difference by the end of the Hundred Years’ War, which saw England almost entirely pushed off the continent with the exception of their possession of Calais. Nonetheless, even if the practical effect of the Hundred’ Years War on England was glory followed by ruinous strife, its place in English culture remains a celebrated one. The war encouraged a sense of shared national unity in the face of the French, it created national icons out of leaders like King Henry V, and the mythology of the humble but determined English infantry was born out of the mud of Agincourt and the success of English peasant longbowmen against the ostentatiously upper-class French men-at-arms. Today, when the English think of the war, they are more likely to ignore the burning cottages and the payment of ransoms and instead remember the brave words put into Henry V's mouth centuries later by Shakespeare: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.” On St Crispin's Day, 25 October 1415, Henry V's small English force routed the French in the most famous clash of the Hundred Years' War. On a battlefield east of the tiny village of Agincourt in northern France, the English king's heavily outnumbered army repelled the massed attacks of the enemy and killed or captured leading members of the French nobility. The encounter changed the course of the war and its impact on English history endures to this day.In this important new study, military historian and battle psychologist Michael K. Jones puts Henry V's inspirational generalship at the heart of the story, showing how the king motivated his tired and hungry soldiers to win against the odds. He also provides a fascinating tour of the Agincourt battlefield, setting out in an accessible way the movements of the opposing armies and offering an exciting new rendition of this heroic triumph of the underdog.

on St Crispin's Day, 25 October 1415, Henry V's English Army Crushed The French In The Most Famous Battle Of The Hundred Years' War. His Outnumbered Force Of Men-at-arms And Archers Repelled The Repeated Charges Of The French Mounted Men And Killed Or Captured The Leading Members Of The French Nobility. The Encounter Changed The Course Of The War And Made A Mark On English And French History That Endures To This Day. In This Compelling New Study, Medieval Historian Michael K. Jones Looks Critically At The Historical Evidence And Retells In Graphic Detail The Story Of This Extraordinary Campaign. He Also Provides A Fascinating Tour Of The Sites Associated With It - Harfleur, Henry V's Route Across Northern France And The Agincourt Battlefield Itself.

A classic compendium of and reference guide to the military history of the world - the wars, combat operations, and growth of military arts: tactics, strategy, and weaponry. New, updated, and revised to include new discoveries about the use of weapons in ancient China, upheavals in Lebanon, the winding down of the Soviet-Afghanistan war, the invasions of Grenada and Panama by U.S. forces, the war in the Persian Gulf, and the collapse of the Soviet and Eastern European Communist governments. -- Publisher description