Battle of Agincourt

“ The field of battle was literally smothered with corpses of men and horses; shattered weapons lay everywhere, while in front of the still-standing row of stakes the barrier of slaughtered Frenchmen was piled breast-high. Amid these horrible surroundings archers were carelessly sauntering, withdrawing arrows that had sunk deep in the clayey soil to replenish their quivers, or stopping to plunder the body of some wealthy knight. ”

“ Truly the daring courage of the English gentleman has not deteriorated in these latter days! The chivalric valour which placed the officers in the very front of danger was nobly seconded by the unquenchable spirit of the men whom they led; they were mostly fasting, when they hurried to the scene of conflict, and for ten long hours were engaged in one of the deadliest struggles the military historian has ever recorded. Some were sick, all were gaunt and emaciated. It was Agincourt once more. The starved legions met and overthrew five times their number. Such was the bloody battle of Inkermann! ”

“ His first exploit in arms was at the battle of Agincourt in 1415; he followed the party of the Armagnacs and attached himself to the dauphin Charles. He waged continual warfare against the English in Maine until the advent of Joan of Arc. ”

“ Page 20, l. 1. “And instantly an Embassy is sent.”—Of the letters written by Henry on this occasion, Sir Harris Nicolas remarks in his standard work on the Battle of Agincourt, “Their most striking features are falsehood, hypocrisy, and impiety.” Being so bad, they are naturally attributed by him to the much maligned Cardinal Beaufort. It is admitted that “in some places they approach nearly to eloquence, and they are throughout clear, nervous, and impressive.” They are defended at great length by Mr. ”

“ On the 11th he sailed from Portsmouth with the king, and took part in the siege of Harfleur and he battle of Agincourt, where his retinue consisted of three knights, thirty-six esquires, forty men-at-arms, and eighty mounted archers (Nicholas, Agincourt, p. 373) . The next year, having again engaged to serve the king, he sailed in August with John, duke of Bedford [q. v.] ”

“ The Americans have shown us what happens in modern battle to large armies without cohesion. With them the lack of discipline and organization has had the inevitable result. Battle has been between hidden skirmishers, at long distance, and has lasted for days, until some faulty movement, perhaps a moral exhaustion, has caused one or the other of the opposing forces to give way.
In this American War, the mêlées of Agincourt are said to have reappeared, which merely means a mêlée of fugitives. But less than ever has there been close combat.
To fight from a distance is instinctive in man. ”

“ This depends mainly on the relative [5] strength that can be brought into the field. To which side will the consequences of defeat be most serious? This depends mainly on the position of the two armies in the theatre of war. James IV. of Scotland, when the battle of Flodden was fought, had allowed Surrey to get between him and Scotland: here a defeat meant destruction. Henry V. was in a similar strait before Agincourt, but in this case victory in the field extricated him from danger. Obviously one of two combatants may begin with very inferior strength to his opponent ”

“ They had nearly a hundred thousand cavalry. The English force was only six thousand men at arms, and twenty-four thousand foot, mostly archers. The constable of France had selected a strong position in the fields in front of the village of Agincourt. Each lord had planted his banner on the spot which he intended to occupy during the battle. The night was cold, dark, and rainy, but numerous fires lighted the horizon ”

“ Prince Maurice, in his letter to the queen, attributed his success entirely to the good order and directions of Sir Francis Vere. Thus, in a pitched battle the English troops met and defeated an army of six times their strength of the veterans of Spain, and showed conclusively that the English fighting man had in no way deteriorated since the days of Agincourt, the last great battle they had fought upon the Continent. ”

“ He moreover 78 reminded them that the French boasted they would cut off three fingers from the right hand of every archer they should take, so that their shot should never again kill man nor horse. The army cried out loudly, saying, ‘Sir, we pray God give you a good life, and the victory over your enemies.’” —Nicolas’s History of Agincourt. ”

“ No attempt was made to oppose the landing of the army. The disaster of Agincourt had so far broken the courage of the French that they had no idea of meeting the English in the field. The plan of campaign seems to have been that the fortified towns should be garrisoned as strongly as possible, and the invading force left to exhaust itself by the effort of taking them. Two or three sieges, as costly to the conquerors as that of110 Harfleur had been, would leave little to be done by way of active operations for the defence of the country. ”

“ As may be naturally supposed, the greater number of those present were men; but, nevertheless, the circle round the King's person contained several of the other sex; for, besides the wife and daughters of the Governor of Calais, and the ladies of several of the principal officers and citizens of the town, a number of the female relations of the conquerors of Agincourt, who had come over to the English city, on the first news of the army's march from Harfleur, were likewise in the hall. ”

“ The French knights, whose armour had protected them to some extent from the slaughter that the arrows had effected among the soldiers, fought bravely and rallied their men to resistance; but with shouts of "Agincourt!" the men-at-arms and archers, led by Guy,—who now for the first time fought in his knightly armour,—were irresistible. They had boarded at the enemy's stern so as to get all their foes in front of them, and after clearing the stern castle they poured down into the waist and gradually won their way along it. ”

“ He and the army that fought with him at Agincourt are the true precursors of Craufurd and the Light Division. His body, borne with mournful pomp from the castle of Vincennes, still rests among us in Westminster Abbey, and above it still hang his saddle, his shield blazoned with the lilies of France, and the helmet, deeply dinted by two sword-cuts, which he wore at Agincourt. Not for three centuries was another soldier to rise up in England of equal fame with the Black Prince, John Hawkwood, and King Harry the Fifth. ”

“ The discord however on which he probably reckoned for security vanished before the actual appearance of the invaders in the heart of France; and when his weary and half-starved force succeeded in crossing the Somme it found sixty thousand Frenchmen encamped on the field of Agincourt right across its line of march. ”

“ Henry now went over to France with a view to securing the throne, but did not get it, as it was occupied at the time. So he returned; but at Agincourt was surprised by the French army, four times as large as his own, and with a loss of forty only, he slew ten thousand of the French and captured fourteen thousand. What the French were doing while this slaughter was going on the modern historian has great difficulty in figuring out. ”

“ Taught by the disastrous defeat of Agincourt,—where ten thousand men, of whom eight thousand were of the nobility, had fallen, owing to the precision and the celerity of the fire of the English archers,—Charles VII. instituted in France the franc archer (Fig. 58) , who wore the salade and the jacket or brigandine, and carried the dagger, the sword, the bow, the quiver or crossbow garnie. These archers were exempt from all taxes or imposts; their equipments were declared not distrainable for debts, and during war they received pay at the rate of four livres a month. ”

“ Nothing was heard on any side but accents of triumph and satisfaction, prognostications of a speedy and almost bloodless victory over an enemy, to whom they were superior by at least six times the number of the whole English host,--and bloody resolutions of avenging the invasion of France, and the capture of Harfleur, by putting to death all prisoners except the King and other princes, from whom large ransoms might be expected; for a vain people is almost always a sanguinary one. A proud nation can better afford to forgive. ”

“ Besides, we had certain advice that there was already a body of French troops, consisting of 8000 men, in Spain, and upon their march to reinforce the enemy. Thus, as the army must inevitably have perished without fighting, it was thought reasonable to run the hazard of a battle, wherein we had an equal chance to come off victors, which was accordingly done two days after, on the 25th of April 1707, N. S., but with ill success. ”

“ Anjou fed his lines constantly; fresh troops took the places of the fallen; we might slay and slay, but the number of our enemies never seemed to lessen. And in the midst of the terrible uproar a cry arose that our centre was wavering. For an hour or more a battle of giants had been taking place there. In front of our infantry the dead lay piled in a heap, but for every royalist who died Anjou sent another. ”

“ Yet over these ancient highways—many of them still in existence—the Roman legionaries of Ostorius Scapula had borne their victorious eagles; and along them many a Silurian warrior, standing erect in his scythe-winged chariot, was carried to conquest or defeat.
At a later period had they echoed the tramp of armed men, when Henry the Fourth, father of Agincourt’s hero, made war upon the Welsh. ”

“ See, see!" he cried, "some one waves to us from the window!" and, casting off his corslet, and all his heavy armour, he was hurrying down. But the Count caught him by the arm with a glowing cheek, saying, "Stay, stay, yet a little. They are in no danger yet. The stream may not rise higher."
"But if it does, they are lost," answered Woodville, gently disengaging his arm.
"Then I will go with you," said the Count.
"No, no, my lord!" replied the young knight; "you would but fill the boat, which is small enough. One man is better than a thousand there. ”

“ Nothing like it had occurred since Agincourt, nor afterwards occurred till Waterloo." Both Villars and Boufflers performed prodigies of strategy and valour; but of what avail against Marlborough? Then he laid siege to, and took Mons: after which there remained only two more fortresses between the Allies and Paris! These prodigious operations, however, formed the subject of vexatious insults, paltry and presumptuous criticism, to his malignant enemies in England, with a view to lower his overwhelming influence at home. ”

“ Keep back!" cried the knight; and at the same moment a more numerous party appeared to the support of the Armagnacs, led by a baron's banner. They bore down straight towards him, some one still calling upon him to surrender; and, seeing that farther resistance was vain, Woodville raised his lance and took off his gauntlet as a sign that he yielded.
"After them, like lightning!" cried the voice of a gentleman in a suit of richly ornamented steel. "A knight is a good exchange for a squire; but we must not let the other escape.--Now, fair sir, do you yield, rescue or no rescue?" ”

“ Are there no brave men here?"
A rush was instantly made towards Richard of Woodville; and one man, with a guisarme, thrust himself right in his way; but laughing loud, the young knight bared his long, heavy sword, and waved it over his head, grasping Ella by the hand, and exclaiming in English, "On, my men! on! open a way, there!"
All but the most resolute of his opponents scattered from his path; and his stout followers forced their way forward into the hall, showing some reverence for the priests and monks, it is true ”

“ What of those days?"
"Why, Sire, you may remember," answered Woodville, "that, as that noble gentleman you have just named and I rode by the stream near Dunbury, one night in the spring of the year, we found the body of my poor cousin Kate drowned in the water. The man before you thought fit to cast foul doubts on as true and gallant a gentleman as ever lived, Sir Henry Dacre. He now lies at the point of death from wounds received near Agincourt, and if aught on earth can save him, it will be to know that his good name is cleared from all suspicion. ”

“ Disease made frightful ravages in his camp, the poisonous miasma of the marshes of Harfleur carrying off in those few weeks fully five thousand of the besiegers. On the 7th October the remnant of the army advanced, and on the 25th the splendid victory of [305] Agincourt was achieved. Robert Legh, however, was not permitted to share in the glories of that memorable day, he having died of the pestilence five days after the surrender of Harfleur, and an inquisition by virtue of a writ of diem clausit extremum, dated 16th October, 1415, was taken. ”

“ During the day’s pursuit the enemy suffered heavy loss in killed and wounded, some hundreds of prisoners fell into our hands and a battery of eight machine guns was captured by the 2nd Division.
On this day the 6th French Army was heavily engaged west of the River Ourcq. The enemy had largely increased his force opposing them; and very heavy fighting ensued, in which the French were successful throughout.
The left of the 5th French Army reached158 the neighbourhood of Château Thierry after the most severe fighting, having driven the enemy completely north of the river with great loss. ”