II Middle Ages · Hundred Years’ War
Mud, arrows and stakes: an exhausted English army destroys the flower of the French nobility.
Result Decisive victory for England
Background
In October 1415, a small English army, exhausted and sick, was trapped in northern France by a far superior force. What happened on St Crispin’s Day passed into legend.
England and France had been in conflict since 1337 in what is known as the Hundred Years’ War. In 1415, the young King Henry V once again claimed the French crown and landed in Normandy. France was weakened: its king, Charles VI, suffered bouts of madness, and two noble factions, the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, were fighting for power.
Henry besieged the port of Harfleur. The town fell after more than a month, but dysentery decimated his army. Instead of going home by sea, the king decided to march overland to Calais, an English possession, to show that he could move through France at will.
The march, planned to take some eight days, lasted more than two weeks: the French blocked the fords of the Somme and forced the English to make a long detour, with little food and in the rain. On 24 October, near the village of Agincourt, they found the French army barring their way.
That night it rained without stopping on the freshly ploughed fields. The next morning, the ground between the two armies was a quagmire.
Order of battle
Select a unit to open its card: who commanded it, how it fought and what part it played in the battle.
Henry V · Edward, Duke of York · Thomas, Lord Camoys · Sir Thomas Erpingham
≈ 6,000 to 9,000, some five in six of them archers
A small army, sick with dysentery and hungry after weeks of marching, but with a decisive weapon: thousands of archers with the longbow.
Charles d’Albret, Constable · Marshal Boucicaut · Charles, Duke of Orléans · John, Duke of Alençon
≈ 12,000 to 25,000 according to modern estimates (some chronicles give much higher figures)
The elite of the French nobility, sure of its numerical superiority but without a clear single command: King Charles VI, who was ill, was not on the field.
Troops who shoot with the bow. They wear down the enemy from a distance before the clash. How effective they are depends on range, protection and rate of fire.
Infantry with armour and shield, ready for hand-to-hand fighting. Slow, but very hard to break from the front.
Foot troops with hardly any protection who fight in open order: they harass the enemy with missile weapons, cover the flanks and pull back before the clash.
Protected horsemen mounted on strong horses. Their charge can break a line, but they tire quickly and find it hard to regroup.
Troops who shoot with the crossbow: more power and accuracy than the bow, but a much lower rate of fire.
Generals carry their side’s flag, and the most representative units carry their own. Hover over a flag to see its name.
The thick line marks the front of each unit. Teeth in front of it show stakes, walls or other defences. A double border marks elite troops.
Phase by phase
Schematic map. The exact extent of the woods and the position of the archers (only on the wings, or also between the groups of men-at-arms) are still debated.
Phase 1 of 6: Face to face
Phase I of VI · Dawn
After a night of rain, the two armies form up on a freshly ploughed field between two woods. The English place their men-at-arms in a thin line, divided into three bodies, with the archers on the wings. The French form three great lines, one behind the other, and two groups of cavalry at either end.
The French are in no hurry: the longer they wait, the hungrier the English will be and the more reinforcements will arrive. For three or four hours, nobody moves.
Phase II of VI · Around 11:00
Henry V realises that time is against him and takes the initiative: he orders an advance. According to the chroniclers, Sir Thomas Erpingham gives the signal by throwing his baton into the air.
The English line halts some 250 or 300 metres from the French, just within bowshot. The archers drive in their stakes again, angled towards the enemy, and open fire. The first clouds of arrows fall on the French mass, which cannot reply.
Phase III of VI · Shortly after
Harassed by the arrows, the French launch their cavalry against the archers on the wings. But many horsemen are not at their posts and the charge is made with far fewer than planned.
The narrow ground prevents them from going round the archers and the mud slows the horses down. When they arrive, they meet a wall of stakes and a hail of arrows at point-blank range. The wounded horses rear, fall or turn back.
Meanwhile, the French vanguard, on foot, sets off towards the English line.
Phase IV of VI · Minutes later
The repulsed cavalry flees back through its own vanguard, trampling the men on foot and churning up the mud even more.
The French men-at-arms advance in armour weighing 20 or 25 kilos, sinking up to their ankles in the sodden earth, with their heads down so that the arrows do not get in through the slits of their helms. The archers shoot at them from the front and from the flanks.
To avoid the arrows, the French veer towards the centre, towards the English men-at-arms. On top of that, the field narrows between the woods. The vanguard becomes a packed mass in which almost no one can use their weapons.
Phase V of VI · Midday
The French vanguard crashes into the English line and pushes it back a few paces. But those in front, pushed by those behind, have no room to fight. Those who fall cannot get up: the mud and the weight of their armour trap them, and others fall on top of them.
The archers, now out of arrows or very close to the enemy, drop their bows and throw themselves at the flanks with swords, axes and the mallets used to drive in the stakes. Light and agile, they are deadly against exhausted knights half buried in the mud.
The French second line walks into the same trap. Henry V fights in the front line; the Duke of York dies on the English right wing.
Phase VI of VI · Early afternoon
The first two French lines are broken. The English begin to pull the living nobles out of the heaps of bodies to hold them for ransom.
Then an alarm reaches Henry. The chroniclers give two reasons: the French rearguard, still intact, seems to be preparing to charge, and armed men from the area have attacked the English baggage at Maisoncelle (it is not clear at what point in the battle this attack took place). Fearing that the prisoners, who outnumber their guards, will take up arms again, Henry orders them to be killed. It is not known how many die before the order is withdrawn: historians’ estimates vary widely.
The charge never comes. The French rearguard leaves the field and the battle ends in a crushing English victory.
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What came next
Agincourt did not win the war, but it changed the balance of power and gave England one of its great national myths.
The Constable of France, three dukes, numerous counts and hundreds of knights died at Agincourt: a huge part of the French ruling class. Many others were taken prisoner, such as Charles, Duke of Orléans, who spent 25 years in captivity in England and wrote much of his poetry there.
Henry V returned to England a hero. In the following years he conquered Normandy and, taking advantage of the French civil war, signed the Treaty of Troyes in 1420: he married Catherine, daughter of Charles VI, and was recognised as heir to the throne of France.
But he died in 1422, aged 35, a few weeks before Charles VI himself. His son, Henry VI, was a baby. A few years later, with Joan of Arc, France began to win back the lost ground, and by 1453 England held only Calais.
Bar: strength. Colour: casualties, with the same figures as the text for each side (depending on the case, only the dead or also the wounded and prisoners). The hatched or lighter part shows the range between the sources.
A popular legend says that the two-fingered salute was born at Agincourt, as a taunt by the English archers at the French, who threatened to cut those fingers off. There is no evidence for it.
During the march, every English archer carried a sharpened stake: the king ordered it on learning that the French planned to launch their cavalry against the archers.
The French nobles argued over the honour of being in the front line. In the end, the vanguard was so full of great lords that the crossbowmen were relegated behind it.
One of the main sources, the Gesta Henrici Quinti, was written by a chaplain of the English army who watched the battle from the rear, next to the baggage.