James Kenneth Bowen CV
The famous Battle of Agincourt in 1415 has for centuries been regarded as an epic of heroism and a source of pride by the British people. in his four-volume "A History of the English-Speaking Peoples", no less a person than Sir Winston Churchill said "Agincourt ranks as the most heroic of all land battles England has ever fought".
As so often happens when great anniverseries occur, the 600th anniverary of this great battle arrived in 2015 and was marked by publication of a number of dubious treatments of the Battle of Agincourt by revisionist historians with no understanding of the dynamics of medieval battle. The Agincourt revisionism appears to have been started by controversial medieval historian Professor Anne Curry in her book "Agincourt: A new History" (Initially published in 2007 and reprinted in 2015).
In 2005, Southampton University's Professor Anne Curry decided to provoke controversy by turning everything that we thought we knew about Agincourt on its head.
In her revisionist treatment of the Battle of Agincourt, Professor Curry claimed to have exposed the famous victory of a heavily outnumbered, starving, and disease-ridden English army over a massive French army at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 as a centuries-old "myth".
When launching her book, Professor Curry claimed that her researching of English and French archival records of hired mercenaries, including men-at-arms and archers, suggested to her that the English at Agincourt were outnumbered by a factor of only four to three rather than by at least four to one, and possibly six to one, as previously claimed by intelligent eyewitnesses to the battle and accepted by generations of military historians since 1415. Based upon her "research", she suggested that the English army numbered about 9,000 and she reduced the number of French from at least 25 thousand to only 12,000.
I feel that it is appropriate for me to say something about this controversy and explain why the approach of Professor Curry to Agincourt in her books is so deeply flawed that it deserves an "F" grade.
There are serious problems attending Professor Curry's attempt to diminish the heroic quality of the English participation in the Battle of Agincourt by reliance primarily on surviving archival evidence.
First, she has to reject the evidence of an educated man-at-arms who was an eyewitness to the battle in the French army. This is an absurd approach that seriously undermines the validity of her claims.
Secondly, her reliance upon archival records ignores the fact that many French archival records from the time of Agincourt were destroyed in the French Revolution.
On the other hand, a vast quantity of English records that are relevant to Agincourt still exists in British archives. These British records show that the attendance of most of King Henry V's army in France, including the presence of England's nobility, was purchased by the king. Even royal dukes signed contracts of employment (indentures) for the Agincourt campaign.
Finally, and by contrast with English archival records, Professor Curry appears to have failed to appreciate, or perhaps wished to ignore, the historical fact that the massive French army at Agincourt was largely composed of the great nobles of France, their vassal lords, and their knights, squires, and retinues of men-at-arms. These fighting men were present at Agincourt in pursuance of feudal obligations to the French king and the summoning of them by proclamation to serve in the kIng's armies was called the arrière-ban. They were not mercenaries. It is highly unlikely that these massive feudal levies would have been recorded in any French archival records of hired mercenaries, such as Genoese crossbowmen, used by Professor Curry to create her fanciful revisionist history of Agincourt.
Professor Curry produced no convincing historical evidence to support her Agincourt theory, but if she was seeking controversy, public attention, and the probability of increased book sales, she appears to have achieved her purpose.
It appeared to me that Professor Curry was another armchair academic who purported to write about military history but lacked any realistic appreciation of the dynamics of a battlefield, medieval or otherwise. I view Professor Curry as falling into this category because she fails to appreciate that the Battle of Agincourt could not have been fought, as it was observed by intelligent eyewitnesses, with her fanciful ratio of nine thousand English fighting men pitted against a French army of only twelve thousand fighting men, i.e. a ratio of 3 to 4.
As a graduate military historian, and one who has served as an army officer and seen active service, I have formed the view that the most accurate and engaging history of the Agincourt Campaign is that written by Dr Juliet Barker, and recently published in a new updated edition under the title "Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle" (2015). However, Dr Barker's treatment falters when it comes to the battle itself, and that is not surprising because she is an academic with no military experience that might help her to understand the dynamics of medieval warfare.
When it comes to very readable and accurate descriptions of the Battle of Agincourt itself, I recommend Lieutenant Colonel Alfred H. Burne's "The Agincourt War" (1956), Sir John Keegan's "The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme"(1983), and Matthew Bennett's "Agincourt 1415: Triumph against the Odds" (1991).
Sir John Keegan accepts as accurate Colonel Burne's assessment of numbers and dispositions of the two armies at Agincourt, and in particular, the colonel's assessment that the French army numbered "about 25,000". All of these excellent histories of a famous battle are available from Amazon.
I will provide here my own account of the Battle of Agincourt to demonstrate that Professor Curry lacks any sound appreciation of a medieval battle.
King Henry V invaded France with just over 12,000 fighting men. Henry's first target was the massively fortified town of Harfleur at the mouth of the Seine. The gallant French defence of the town prolonged the siege and allowed an epidemic of dysentery to ravage the English army. After the surrender of Harfleur, with his army reduced to less than two-thirds its original number through disease and battle injuries, Henry V abandoned his original plan to march on Paris. He could have safely withdrawn his army to England from the harbour of captured Harfleur but pride, and the political imperative to show more than the capture of Harfleur for the massive financial outlay on his campaign in France, impelled Henry to march his heavily depleted army from Harfleur to the English-held port of Calais on the English Channel. He buried some two thousand soldiers at Harfleur who had died from battle injuries or dysentery, and sent at least two thousand wounded and/or sick soldiers back to England. He had to reduce further the size of his army on the march to Calais by leaving a substantial English garrison to defend captured Harfleur. His small army had run out of food and was starving as it set off on a journey of several days to Calais. Henry hoped to find food on the journey to Calais.
The march to Calais would normally be completed in 7-8 days and involve crossing a ford near the mouth of the Somme River. Henry's initial purpose in marching his army across French Normandy to Calais was to provoke the French to battle on their own soil, even though his army was now reduced to about 900 men-at-arms and 5,000 archers. The French rose to the challenge. They blocked the ford across the Somme, destroyed bridges, and stripped the country between Harfleur and Calais of any food to feed Henry's army. After a lengthy diversion eastwards along the Somme, Henry finally found an unguarded ford and crossed the river.
The Constable of France Charles d'Albret and Marshal of France Jean Le Maingre (called Boucicaut) were both experienced soldiers and they knew how dangerous were the English longbow archers. They had argued in the French royal council that the English army should be allowed to reach Calais unhindered and depart for England. Harfleur could then be besieged and recaptured, and Henry V would be left with nothing to show for his invasion of France. They had been overruled in the council by the French royal dukes who were blinded by the prospect of glorious victory over the hated English invaders. The French finally brought Henry V to bay at Agincourt where they blocked the path of Henry's army to safety and food at Calais. The desperate English were starving, exhausted, and many were ravaged by dysentery. At this stage, with his army starving and ravaged by disease, Henry V was no longer interested in a battle with the French army. His offer to hand back Harfleur in return for unimpeded access to Calais was rejected by the French royal dukes who wanted a battle that they were confident of winning.
There were intelligent eyewitness chroniclers in both the English and French armies at Agincourt, and I suggest that the most reliable assessment of French numbers on the actual battlefield probably comes from the noble Burgundian man-at-arms Jehan de Waurin who history records not only as a soldier in the French army but also as Lord of le Forestier, politician, chronicler, and bibliophile. I believe that Jehan de Waurin's credibility as an accurate chronicler of the Battle of Agincourt is enhanced by the fact that he actually lists the number of men assigned to each division or "battle" of the French army and the two cavalry formations on the wings. He lists 8,000 men-at-arms, 4,000 archers, and 1,500 crossbowmen in the vanguard; a similar number in the main body, and two heavily armoured cavalry wings numbering in total 1,400. So including supporting cavalry, we have 28,400 French fighting men in the vanguard and main divisions or "battles" without including the rearguard division which probably amounted to at least 6,000 mounted men-at-arms. Without including the numbers for the French rearguard, Jehan de Waurin has driven a "coach-and-four" through Professor Curry's fanciful underestimate of French numbers. On the basis of his listing of numbers in the French divisions or "battles", Dr Barker describes Jehan de Waurin's claim that the French outnumbered the English by six to one as "most likely" (at page 264).
The English and French armies formed up early on the morning of 25 October 1415 with the French army blocking the road to Calais. The two armies were separated by some 1,000 yards (914 metres) of rain-drenched ploughed farmland. Confident of their overwhelming strength in numbers, and knowing that the English were exhausted and starving, the French were initially content to follow the advice of Marshal Boucicaut who had advised that the French should wait for the English either to attack or attempt to flee. Either course would likely prove fatal for the English army. The strength of English archers was in defence and not attack. Henry V knew that his small army was starving and that flight was not an option. His weakened and starving army would be pursued and destroyed by armoured French cavalry.
As the hours passed on the morning of 25 October with no movement from the massive French army, Henry V decided to advance the English line of battle to within long bowshot of the French army (roughly 300 paces), and hoped to provoke the French with arrows fired into their army. An extraordinary aspect of the Battle of Agincourt, and clear evidence of the absence of leadership in the French army, was the failure of the French to attack while the English army was slowly moving forward through thick mud to its advanced line of battle which would now be only 300 paces from the French army. At this stage, the English army was seriously vulnerable to attack while the archers were busy hammering their defensive stakes into the ground with their backs to the French. The failure of the French to seize this unexpected opportunity to destroy the hated English archers by cavalry charge, or by French archers whose crossbow bolts could easily have reached the unprotected English archers, can almost certainly be attributed to the astonishing absence of an appointed commander of the French army at Agincourt.
For eight years prior to Agincourt, France had been racked by civil war and many of the great French nobles and their vassal lords assembled at Agincourt hated and distrusted each other. Before the battle, the royal dukes and other great nobles of France were squabbling over which of them would have the honour of leading the vanguard of the French attack. In the end, no one was appointed to lead the French army at Agincourt, and consequently, there was no commander and no vital chain of command. If the French king had not been insane, he might have appointed one man as overall commander of his army. His son, the pleasure-loving Dauphin Louis, had no military experience and was kept safely at Rouen. The experienced professional French military commanders, Constable d'Albret and Marshal Boucicaut, were not in effective command of the French army. These high military officers were regarded by the great nobles of France as being present at Agincourt to give them advice, but only when they sought it. Had either veteran warrior been in effective command of the French host, it appears very unlikely that the French would have idly watched the English advance to long bowshot. The tactic succeeded when the English archers began firing into the French army. The provocation stung the French to action. A ragged and wholly uncoordinated French attack developed by what Lieutenant Colonel Alfred H. Burne has described as an "undisciplined rabble" in his history "The Agincourt War" (available from Amazon).
At the point where the English finally established their forward line of battle, the forest encroached on either side to leave open ground measuring only some 900-1,000 yards (823-914 metres). This figure is put forward by the distinguished British military historian Sir John Keegan in the Agincourt section of his highly commended "The Face Of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme". Sir John Keegan appears to adopt Jehan Waurin's figures of 8,000 men-at-arms in both the French vanguard and main body (ibid.). Keegan writes that these numbers in each French division would produce a dense body of men-at-arms with ranks "some eight deep" at the point of tactical contact of the two armies (ibid.).
The narrowing of the point of tactical contact of the two armies favoured the English who now faced much less risk of being flanked by French cavalry intent on attacking and crushing the English archers who were mostly positioned on the wings of the English army. The English tactic would also seriously hamper the French vanguard and main body - producing a funnel effect that compressed even more tightly the already dense French lines of battle as each division struggled in heavy plate armour through deep sucking mud to reach the English line, and leaving the French men-at-arms greatly hampered in the use of their weapons when they finally reached the English line.
The primary focus of the French vanguard and main body attacks was the 900 English men-at-arms in the centre of the English line of battle. The great lords of France were not interested in demeaning themselves by attacking lowly archers, and many in the French divisions were interested in the ransoms to be paid by captured English lords and knights. This focus on the comparatively small number of English men-at-arms in the centre of the English line of battle and the deadly fire of the English archers on the flanks of the French divisions served to compress even more tightly the French divisions at the point of tactical contact with the English line, and made it very difficult for the French at the front line to use their weapons effectively, and consequently, they were slaughtered as rank after French rank was pushed forward by the compressed mass behind it. As each of the forward French ranks fell, their bodies created a rising obstacle that had to be surmounted by those in the ranks behind them. Compounding the very serious problem of compression of the French divisions was the exhaustion of the French men-at-arms when they finally reached the English line of battle. The earlier failed French cavalry charges had churned up the wet mud of the battlefield, and the maddened cavalry horses that fled from the English arrow-storm tore gaps in the French vanguard that disrupted further its already ragged and uncoordinated advance. The armoured French men-at-arms approached the English line very slowly, with greatly reduced vision owing to helmet visors having been closed to avoid lethal arrow strikes, and dragging each armoured foot out of the deep sucking mud before they could move on. Many exhausted Frenchmen fell in the crush and died from being trampled underfoot.
The mounted French rearguard probably numbered at least 6,000 men-at-arms but it took no effective part in the battle. It did not include any great nobles or persons of military distinction. The rearguard and the several thousand archers who had been relegated to the rear of the French army still outnumbered the English army but the bodies of thousands of French men-at-arms lay piled high between the rearguard and the English army. Lacking any effective commander, this remnant of the French army finally slipped away from the battlefield.
To show that Professor Curry's suggested figure of 12,000 for the French army at Agincourt is absurdly low, it is only necessary to deduct from that figure the French archers who would have probably numbered at least 5,000 (based on Jehan de Waurin's figures) and who took no significant part in the battle. Add to that figure at least one thousand French cavalry, and Professor Curry is left with only some 6,000 men-at-arms for her three French divisions of men-at-arms, or 2,000 men-at-arms in each of the vanguard, main body, and rearguard. These figures are simply absurd. Such thin French line of battle ranks, as apparently envisaged by Professor Curry when she plucked her figure of twelve thousand for the French army out of the air, would have been heavily depleted by the English arrow storm and would have lacked the mass and momentum necessary to break through the English line of battle. Unlike Professor Curry, Marshal of France Jean Boucicaut had the military experience to appreciate that a dense massing of French men-at-arms was necessary to survive in sufficient numbers to break through the deadly English arrow storm and attack the English men-at-arms positioned between the archers. Marshal Boucicaut's plan for the Battle of Agincourt had envisaged densely massed ranks in each French division. His plan was followed, but he was not the commander of the French army at Agincourt. There was no appointed commander of the French army at Agincourt. As a result, all attacks on the English line of battle were spontaneous, uncoordinated, and disastrous.
Why were the French defeated at Agincourt when they heavily outnumbered a much smaller English army crippled by starvation and ravaged by disease? One likely answer is that Henry V exercised effective command over the English army; his army was highly motivated and disciplined; and his men were equipped with the deadliest weapon on the battlefield - the longbow. As to the French army, the answer is that although massive in overall size, it was a "scratch" army drawn from every corner of France; there was no single effective commander of the French army; it lacked a vital chain of command; it lacked discipline; and consequently, its attacks were ragged and uncoordinated. The sheer numbers, exhaustion, and compression of the French divisions made it very difficult for the front ranks to employ their weapons effectively against the English men-at-arms. The French attack lacked firepower after the French archers were relegated to the rear of the three French divisions of men-at-arms. One justifiable criticism of the French was their failure to use their thousands of deadly archers when the English advanced to within long bowshot of the French army.
Unless the French record of Chateau Ruisseauville can be shown to be wrong, the Bishop of Terouannem and the Abbot of Blangy presided over the burial of some 6,000 French dead from Agincourt in five mass grave-pits. It is also widely accepted by credible historians that 2,000 French prisoners were conveyed to Calais by Henry V. These figures do not include the French nobility, their vassal lords, and knights who were removed from the battlefield to rest in family vaults. So we know that at least 8,000 French died or were taken prisoner in the Battle of Agincourt. We know that a significant number of French men-at-arms from the cavalry force, the vanguard and main body escaped from the battlefield alive. We know from surviving records that several thousand mounted French men-at-arms in the rearguard and several thousand French archers left the battlefield without ever engaging the English. This recognised historical evidence completely destroys the validity of Professor Curry's account of the Battle of Agincourt.
An informed appreciation of the dynamics of a medieval battle such as Agincourt should have revealed that it could not have been fought as observed and described by intelligent eyewitnesses with the low French numbers that Professor Curry imagines were involved.
Professor Curry may be qualified to write medieval history but not adequately qualified to write serious military history.
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