Saint Crispin's day
Kenneth Fowler
THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT edited by Anne Curry The Boydell Press, £40, pp. 474, ISBN 0752417800
This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall near go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered; We few, we happy few, we band of brothers ...
For most people, what they know about the battle of Agincourt is derived from Shakespeare's Henry V. The dramatist's account was largely based on the Chronicles of Raphael Holinshed, which had appeared some 20 years before the first performance of the play in 1599. Holinshed's account was itself based upon those of a number of earlier writers of both the 15th and 16th centuries, some better informed than others. One of the great merits of Anne Curry's book is her systematic presentation, together in one volume, of an impressive body of material on the Agincourt campaign, which is drawn from both English and French sources. This includes relevant extracts from all of the significant chronicles, accounts by 16th-century historians, records of the contemporary reception of the battle, and the emerging literary tradition which dealt with it, as well as excerpts from records relating to the English and French armies involved. All of this material is rendered in English, and is accompanied by textual comparisons, discussion of the interpretations of historians from the 18th century to the present day, as well as her personal interpretations and invariably perceptive comments upon the entire corpus of evidence.
That the outcome of the battle was an overwhelming victory for the English is certain. Yet in spite of the large body of evidence, as the author concludes, it is probable that we will never know for certain what really happened. Engagements on the scale of Agincourt are always difficult to explain. Writers who were present at the battle only saw part of the action,
and their different accounts are frequently difficult to piece together or to reconcile. Other contemporaries were partisan or had an axe to grind. Subsequent writers have looked at the battle with the preoccupations of their own day. It is generally agreed that the French army was larger, perhaps six times larger, than the English. The chroniclers may have exaggerated the numbers involved, but interpreting the surviving administrative records to give a satisfactory tally presents numerous problems.
If the English forces were so much smaller, and the number of French dead and taken prisoner so much larger, how are we to explain Henry's achievement? Are we to ascribe the victory to the English archers and the massive fire-power of their longbows? It seems fairly certain that on the English side the number of archers was significantly greater than that of the men-atarms, but there is much disagreement about their disposition in the overall battle formation. On the French side, it is evident that a recently discovered plan of battle was unsuited to the terrain on which the engagement ultimately took place. Situated between the woods of Agincourt and Tramecourt, and perhaps as little as 940 yards wide at its narrowest point, the battlefield was too small to accommodate their forces, the ground too sodden to take the weight of their heavily armed cavalry, who fell over one another in the press. The smaller number and more lightly armed English had the advantage of manoeuvrability, and the stakes which the archers had been ordered to cut, deployed before them in their final formation, impaled many of the enemy who had not succumbed to the volleys of arrows. These are convincing factors, but do they in themselves explain the outcome? Were the French badly commanded and over-confident? Was English morale better, despite their small number and their long march from Harfleur? Was Henry's generalship inspired, and did his speech to his assembled forces before battle was joined rouse an army faced by an enemy whose numbers were stacked against them and who had no alternative but to fight to the death?
In this rich tapestry of sources there are many memorable details, not least the contrast of the rival camps the night before the battle: the sound of music in the English camp; on the opposite side the bravado of the French, audible to the English not very far away, the silence of the French horses, seen by some as an omen of the catastrophe that was to befall them on the following day. Blood was then shed in plenty, and if we do not smell the stench of death, on which some writers commented, we can perhaps imagine it. One of the great merits of this useful book is that it opens up as many questions as it tries to answer, suggesting new lines of inquiry, indicating sources as yet only partially explored. The omission of a bibliography and an index is thus all the more regrettable.
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