Agincourt 600th anniversary

Manach

For the month that is it in, marking 600 years since the battle, this is a site that commemorates the event.
http://www.agincourt600.com/

Whether or not the battle had any lasting impact on the 100 years war and the eventual loss of English Crown lands to the French state, it had made an impact on England's collective historical narrative.

tac foley

Sure did. A local church has a commemorative plaque noting the death in action of Edward of Norwich, Second Duke of York at Agincourt on October 25th 1415.

I went to the location a few years ago, whilst visiting some relatives in the region. It seems that it has not changed very much at all over the years. Plodding uphill, almost knee-deep in mud, wearing 70-80 pounds of assorted tin bits, keeping my head down against a never-ending hail of arrows and climbing over the three or four-deep dead who were there already is still something that I'd rather not do.

'Si vous ne pouvez pas voirre l'aspecte drôle, ailours, vous ne defriez pas'voir rejointe avec nous.'

Or, as we say today - 'If you can't take a joke you shouldn't have joined'.

tac

Fratton Fred

Manach wrote: »

For the month that is it in, marking 600 years since the battle, this is a site that commemorates the event.
http://www.agincourt600.com/

Whether or not the battle had any lasting impact on the 100 years war and the eventual loss of English Crown lands to the Fretnch state, it had made an impact on England's collective historical narrative.

I'm not sure if it was the battle itself, or the Shakespeare play that had an impact on the historical narrative.

Or maybe it was Laurence Olivier's delivery of that great speach " Cry god for Harry, England and St George".

tac foley

Howsabout a singsong then?

The Agincourt Carol

Owre Kynge went forth to Normandy
With grace and myght of chyvalry
Ther God for hym wrought mervelusly;
Wherefore Englonde may call and cry

CHORUS:
Deo gratias:
Deo gratias Anglia redde pro victoria.

He sette sege, forsothe to say,
To Harflu towne with ryal aray;
That toune he wan and made afray
That Fraunce shal rewe tyl domesday.

Chorus

Then went hym forth, owre king comely,
In Agincourt feld he faught manly;
Throw grace of God most marvelsuly,
He had both feld and victory.

Chorus

Ther lordys, erles and barone
Were slayne and taken and that full soon,
Ans summe were broght into Lundone
With joye and blisse and gret renone.

Chorus

Almighty God he keep owre kynge,
His peple, and alle his well-wyllynge,
And give them grace wythoute endyng;
Then may we call and savely syng:

Chorus

tac

tac foley

Manach wrote: »

For the month that is it in, marking 600 years since the battle, this is a site that commemorates the event.
http://www.agincourt600.com/

Whether or not the battle had any lasting impact on the 100 years war and the eventual loss of English Crown lands to the French state, it had made an impact on England's collective historical narrative.

Well, I guess that if you count the loss - the truly horrendous loss - of the upper levels of French aristocracy, many families losing their entire male line in the mud, or slaughtered when Henry gave the order to kill all the prisoners, then I'm pretty certain that it had a real impact. For a while.

It is rumoured [only] that a very distant ancestor of my own family survived by being partially smothered under a pile of dead, and escaped in the mist the following morning. As our family name is French, derived from St Crispin on whose saint's day the battle was fought, it was taken as an omen, and he never again took up arms, even when the war restarted a few years later when Henry died of dysentery.

When the battalions of the French were thus formed, it was grand to see them; and as far as one could judge by the eye, they were in number fully six times as many as the English.
...

[The French] men-at-arms without number began to fall; and their horses feeling the arrows coming upon them took to flight before the enemy, and following their example many of the French turned and fled. Soon afterwards the English archers, seeing the vanguard thus shaken, issued from behind their stockade, threw away their bows and quivers, then took their swords, hatchets, mallets, axes, falcon-beaks and other weapons, and, pushing into the places where they saw these breaches, struck down and killed these Frenchmen without mercy, and never ceased to kill till the said vanguard which had fought little or not at all was completely overwhelmed, and these went on striking right and left till they came upon the second battalion, which was behind the advance guard, and there the King personally threw himself into the fight with his men-at-arms.

When the King of England perceived them coming thus he caused it to be published that every one that had a prisoner should immediately kill him, which those who had any were unwilling to do, for they expected to get great ransoms for them. But when the King was informed of this he appointed a gentleman with two hundred archers whom he commanded to go through the host and kill all the prisoners, whoever they might be.

This esquire, without delay or objection, fulfilled the command of his sovereign lord, which was a most pitiable thing, for in cold blood all the nobility of France was beheaded and inhumanly cut to pieces, and all through this accursed company, a sorry set compared with the noble captive chivalry, who when they saw that the English were ready to receive them, all immediately turned and fled, each to save his own life.

Many of the cavalry escaped; but of those on foot there were many among the dead. (Jehan de Wavrin, Chronicles, 1399-1422; Fifth Volume: Book One, Chapter XII, pages 209-214, translated by Sir William Hardy and Edward L.C.P. Hardy.)

Not one of the best of days to be French, especially a prisoner of the English, who, fearing a reinforced attack from their rear, slaughtered upwards of four thousand prisoners to prevent them re-grouping. A lot more than the flower of France died that day - also dead was any idea of chivalry.

tac

Manach

From Brannagh's film : Non nobis Domine.

tac foley

Crécy - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAUp1ripJLE - but you get the idea.......

French losses were >6,000 dead - unknown number injured.

English losses were ~400.

tac

Peregrinus

Can't help but notice:

tac foley wrote: »

Not one of the best of days to be French, especially a prisoner of the English, who, fearing a reinforced attack from their rear, slaughtered upwards of four thousand prisoners to prevent them re-grouping.

tac foley wrote: »

French losses were >6,000 dead - unknown number injured.

If both figures are correct, then the implication is that two-thirds of the French losses were due to the English slaughter of their prisoners. And this by an invading army who themselves took very light casualties.

Which means that, from the French perspective, this wasn't so much a battle as a horrendous massacre.

There was famously bad blood between the English and the French for fully five centuries afterwards. Now, granted, the economic and political interests of both nations fed into that but, still, it was a remarkably enduring bitterness. I can't help but wonder if Agincourt played a significant role in entrenching that so deeply.

Agincourt is remembered in England as a victory of almost mythic greatness - in large part due to Shakespeare's treatment of it. I wonder how it is remembered in France? Do they think of it as an outrageous war crime, or do they prefer to forget that it ever happened?

tac foley

Crécy and Poitiers were also famous victories for the English and their mainly Welsh archers.

Let's not start down the 'war crimes' route, or else before you know it the British government will be coerced by the rest of the EU into paying the descendants of those 'poor French' - excluding moi , of course, as my ancestor survived - reparations. Talking to our docent at the battlefield site - a local historian - he was simply very Gallic and rather rueful about it - over-confidence and ill-preparedness for the ground and the effect of a few hundred thousand arrows, as well as an incredibly high level of sheer scorn for the perfidious English were partly to blame, but the slaughter of the prisoners was a definite move back into barbarism that was, in his view, uncalled for, after all, the mostly aristocratic prisoners had given their parole not to escape or to take up arms until their eventual release after ransoming.

My family eventually left France around the middle 1600's and fled to England to escape being burned or flayed alive - a fate that happened to many other Jews at that time of general religious unrest in Western Europe.

tac

Scipio_Hib

The three battles probably need to be taken together - Crecy, Agincourt and Poitiers - rather than in isolation.

The killing of the hostages was in line with the then rules of war and chivalry.