The Battle of Agincourt took place on October 25, 1415 between French and British troops near the town of Agincourt in northern France during the Hundred Years War.
1415, July 6 - English King Henry V officially declared war on France, on August 11 his troops sailed to the continent. Two days later, his army, numbering, according to various sources, from 9 to 15 thousand people, including about a thousand heavily armed knights, laid siege to the port of Harfleur, which was the key to Normandy. The port was not an easy catch: it was protected by thick walls, reinforced by 26 towers, and the city garrison included about a thousand soldiers.
Contrary to the expectations of the King of England, the siege dragged on, and the city capitulated only on 22 September. The British army, having suffered heavy losses from disease, was able to continue the campaign only on October 8. By that time, the French had assembled a large force in Rouen. In the sources, their number is extremely contradictory, but they are similar in the main thing: they were noticeably larger in number than the thinned army of the British. According to modern data, the French army numbered from 10 to 15 thousand soldiers, of which about 4 thousand were knights. At the time of the Battle of Agincourt, the British had 7-9 thousand - mainly archers.
Waste troops
The troops met on October 24 near the village of Agincourt, near Calais. It was pouring rain all day, evening was approaching, and both commanders preferred to wait for the morning of October 25th. In the morning, the troops lined up in battle formations. The commander of the French, Charles d'Albret, put heavy knightly cavalry on the front lines. The army formed a column of two hundred soldiers in a row. In the narrow space, sandwiched between willow thickets on one side and swamps on the other, the knights and their warriors were forced to stand very tightly. Riflemen and spearmen took up positions behind the knightly troops.
Charles d'Albret himself was against this kind of formation and proposed to put the shooters in front of the cavalry. But this was insisted on by the king's representative, the Duke of Orleans. First, from the point of view of the prince of blood, the peasants and townspeople - the "rabble" from which the infantry and riflemen were recruited - had no right to be the first to enter the battle, because it was "not chivalrous." Secondly, the knights were dressed in gold, silver and velvet, and the clothes of the shooters were rather modest, so that the beauty of the knightly army could be spoiled by the "ragamuffins". As a result, because of the arrogance of the titled aristocrat, the French made the first mistake already in the deployment of troops.
The British settled on a narrow strip of land about 700 meters wide, bounded by large forests. The first row, having erected a fence of sharp stakes, was occupied by arrows with long bows. The infantry with spears and glaives stood behind them. On the flanks were the dismounted knights with their retinues. The British chainmail armor was lighter than the plate-plate armor of the enemy, and this gave another advantage to the British - in their heavy armor, the French did not have the opportunity to quickly move through the swamp that the battlefield had turned into after the last downpour. The construction of the British was very successful: the narrow space constrained the actions of the French cavalry, and the deep mud of the recently plowed field made it very difficult to maneuver.
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For three hours, the armies stood at opposite ends of the gorge, at a distance of just over one and a half kilometers from each other. Perhaps the wary d'Albret remembered the dire consequences of the reckless attacks at Poitiers and Crécy, and hoped to get the British to attack first. However, this caution of the French commander only made it possible for the British to redeploy their archers to the narrowest part of the field, within the distance of an archery. The maneuver was carried out covertly and went unnoticed or ignored by the French. The British riflemen dug in the stakes again and prepared for the attack.
The beginning and course of the Battle of Agincourt
The British began firing at the cavalry ready to attack. In the very first minutes, three advanced enemy detachments were upset. And nevertheless, the French, at odds and without a single leadership, went on the offensive. But here the weak discipline of the French knights affected; in addition, the peculiarity of the terrain made it impossible to outflank the British, and the viscous mud significantly slowed down the speed of the heavy knightly horses.
King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt. Artist G. Payne
As a result, the riders who were able to get through the hail of arrows to the stakes lost their horses and flew out of the saddles at the feet of the archers, who finished off the knights who were clumsy in the mud. The French were able to achieve some success in only one area, where the stakes fell out of the dry ground. Soon they could not stand the shelling of the British riflemen and began to retreat. Moreover, the retreating knightly detachments crushed their own infantry following them.
After the first failure, d'Albret himself led the attack of dismounted French knights and squires, numbering up to 5,000 soldiers, on the English positions. Moreover, the just defeated cavalry, mingling with the advancing infantry, caused complete disorder in the ranks of the latter, nevertheless the knights continued the offensive, since the knightly honor obliged them to cross weapons with the enemy.
Armed with knightly spears specially shortened for foot combat, the warriors, however, quickly lost the first impulse due to fatigue and physical exhaustion. Under a hail of English arrows, the French in heavy armor had to overcome a distance of 300 meters in viscous mud, which made it difficult to move, before engaging in hand-to-hand combat. At the same time, as the distance decreased, the effectiveness of the shooting of English archers also grew: the losses of the French troops increased as they approached the enemy.
Having reached the enemy's positions, the French soldiers engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the British. The English archers from the flanks continued firing from their long bows, and when all the arrows were used up, they dropped their bows and engaged in hand-to-hand combat, which lasted about 3 hours.
The advancing knights were physically exhausted by the march, and as a result, they had difficulty handling their weapons. With axes and swords, lightly armed English archers had an advantage over tired, armored French knights. In addition, English knights and warriors came to the aid of the archers. The French knights, falling to the ground, from fatigue often no longer had the strength to rise to their feet. Nevertheless, the battle was incredibly fierce and the British suffered significant losses: for example, the Duke of York died in a battle with the enemy, and several golden crowns were cut from the helmet of King Henry himself.
The French lost hundreds of people. All their command died or were taken prisoner, and d'Albret himself was killed. Warriors of the third line watched with horror the death of their comrades. Many of them, who were on horseback, left their positions and fled. Therefore, when the third line nevertheless moved to the attack, its blow was significantly weakened and easily stopped. In the midst of the battle, Henry V received news that the French were attacking his camp from the rear (in fact, the camp was attacked by peasants who decided to profit). Fearing not to hold the defense on two fronts, the king of England ordered the killing of all but the most noble prisoners. From 700 to 2000 people were killed.
Aftermath of the Battle of Agincourt
The French suffered a complete defeat, not inferior to the disaster at Poitiers. In general, the Battle of Agincourt was one of the largest defeats of the French in the history of the state. As in Poitiers, France was virtually left without an army: the dukes of Alencon, Brabant, Bar, 9 counts (among whom was the brother of the Duke of Burgundy Philip de Nevers), 92 barons, about 1500 knights and many ordinary nobles were killed; the dukes of Bourbon and Orleans were captured.
This battle had other consequences as well. Immediately after it, a fragile truce collapsed between the rival houses of the Bourguignons and Armagnacs. The latter suffered heavy losses in the battle, which the Burgundians did not hesitate to take advantage of, who immediately gathered troops and advanced to Paris. In fact, the Burgundians sided with the British, and in 1420 a treaty was signed at Troyes, making Henry V the heir to the French crown. France was on the verge of ruin.
A. Domanin