1. There is no dispute about the location of the battle. As will be seen from the extracts in chapter 1, English writers of the fifteenth century always call it Agincourt as do most French writers, although the latter also have a tendency to locate it in relation to other settlements. Basin, for instance, has it ‘fought near to the town of Hesdin in two villages, the one Agincourt, the other Ruisseauville’. The Berry Herald does not mention Agincourt at all but has the armies meet at Blangy. Philippe de Vigneulles writing in the early sixteenth century, names it as ‘the battle of Blangy or Agincourt’. A Venetian, Antion Morosini, places it simply ‘in Artois’, and Thérouanne is also found in one the Chronicles of London. It is in the chronicles of Monstrelet, Le Fèvre and Waurin that we find reference to Henry V considering that battles should take their name from the nearest fortress, village or town where they occurred, and hence having it named as Agincourt after the castle which was close by. For references to these works, see chapter 1. There is fuller discussion of the naming in J.H. Wylie and W.T. Waugh, The Reign of Henry the Fifth (3 vols, Cambridge, 1914–29) (henceforth Wylie), 2, pp. 178–9. ↵
2. For the duke’s comment see A.R. Myers, The character of Richard II’, in English Society and Government in the Fifteenth Century, ed. C.M.D. Crowder (London, 1967), p.112. ↵
3. Gesta Henrici Quinti. The Deeds of Henry the Fifth, ed. F. Taylor and J.S. Roskell (Oxford, 1975). ↵
4. For a general narrative account of the war, see E. Perroy, The Hundred Years War (New York, 1965, first pub. in French in 1945), and for this period in particular, C.T. Allmand, Henry V (London, 1992). ↵
5. C.L. Kingsford, Henry V (New York and London, 1901), p. 401. ↵
6. A. Burne, The Agincourt War (London, 1956), pp. 79–80. ↵
7. This was issued in an expanded edition in 1832, with a third edition of 1833 almost identical to that issued a year before. A facsimile of the third edition was published by H. Pordes in 1971 ↵
8. Agincourt. A Contribution towards an Authentic List of the Commanders of the English Host in King Henry the Fifth’s Expedition to France in the Third Year of his Reign (London, 1850). ↵
9. At Wylie’s death in 1914, only the first volume, which ends with the departure from England in 1415, was complete and could be published immediately. The second, which contains the account of Agincourt, existed in partially corrected proofs and was published with the assistance of Wylie’s family in 1919. The final volume dealing with the years from 1416 to 1422 was published in 1929, being written by W.T. Waugh, Professor of History at McGill University but based upon Wylie’s notes wherever possible. For simplicity’s sake, I shall use ‘Wylie’ for the work as a whole. ↵
10. See for instance, C. Hibbert, Agincourt (London, 1964); J. Keegan. The Face of Battle. A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme (London, 1976); M. Bennett, Agincourt 1415. Triumph Against the Odds (Osprey Campaign series, 9, London, 1991); C.T. Allmand, Henry V (London, 1992). ↵
11. A. Curry, The Hundred Years War (Basingstoke and London, 1993), pp. 91–4. ↵
12. I concur with the verdict of Taylor and Roskell (Gesta, p. xxxiii) that ‘for the course of the siege the Gesta is unsurpassed’. ↵
13. Archives Municipales de Bordeaux, vol. 4. Registres de la Jurade. Délibérations de 1414 à 1416 et de 1420 à 1422 (Bordeaux, 1883), p. 257. M.G.A. Vale, English Gascony 1399–1453 (Oxford, 1970), p. 75, claims that the king had said he would march to Bordeaux before he returned to England, but this expression comes from Bordiu’s letter, not from the king’s. See Text F 6. ↵
14. Registres de la Jurade, p. 250. ↵
15. T. Rymer, Foedera (3rd edition, The Hague, 1739–45), IV, ii, p. 147, translated in Nicolas, appendix VII, and in Hibbert, Agincourt, appendix V. This summons is often dated to 16 September but is much more likely to have been issued after the surrender of Harfleur. ↵
17. Text B1, Le Religieux de Saint-Denis. ↵
18. Bennett, Agincourt, p. 54. See also C. Phillpotts, ‘The French plan of battle during the Agincourt campaign’, English Historical Review, 99 (1984), pp. 59–66. ↵
19. A. Machen, The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War (London, 1915), cited in J. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. The Great Wear in European Cultural History (Cambridge, 1995), p. 67. See also J. Terraine, The Smoke of the Fire. Myths and Anti-Myths of War 18 61–1945 (London, 1980), pp. 17–19. I am grateful to Colin Fox for these references. ↵