118. Henry V Orders the French Prisoners Killed, Agincourt, France October 25 1415

There are no, I tell you no illustrations of the Battle of Agincourt — at least available to me at the moment — that illustrate what was going on at the Battle of Agincourt. There are beautiful and stirring illustrations of armored knights whacking each other with swords; there are illustrations of archers on both sides, facing each other and shooting arrows from bows which are clearly not longbows; there is a decided lack of mud — I finally decided to give you a medieval rendition of the battle, from the 15th century. Close to the battle in time, least like the battle in composition. The ground was not dry; the French did have archers, but they were in the back and they didn’t have longbows; the forces were not the same size; really those Frenchmen on horseback need to be in the front; apparently nobody has dysentery. (minature from l’Abrégé de la Chronique d’Enguerrand de Monstrelet, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, Français 2680, Folio 208)

The battle of Agincourt was almost over when Henry V ordered the prisoners killed. Nowadays, this would clearly be a war crime, but in 1415, it wasn’t, though nobody liked it. Henry did not expect to win the battle, which involved a fairly small bunch of muddy unarmored Englishmen with dysentery up against a formidable line of armored Frenchmen on horses. So he didn’t know, when a group of Frenchmen at the rear of their forces attempted to regroup, that they were going nowhere and were not an issue. He thought they were, and that then the Frenchmen at the rear of the English, the war prisoners, would be able to break through, pick up arms from the battlefield, and slaughter the English. The English were all assuming that none of them were going home, but they were fighting as best they could. But as it happens the battle was almost over anyway, and the English won — they had lost a few hundred men; the French had lost several thousands. Anne is extremely happy, because she gets to talk about the Welsh longbowmen, and Michelle is extremely happy because she gets to tell you where the people of Normandy were hiding whilst Henry and his army roamed around, and believe me, you will not be able to guess where they were. Unless you already have inside knowledge.

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