It took two days to disembark. King Henry came ashore on the 14th, the vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In full view of all, he dropped to his knees, praying for God to give him justice. The landing was unopposed. By 17 August Harfleur was besieged. The king set up camp to the west, on high ground. Clarence was to the east. A code of military discipline was issued, stressing obedience to orders, respect for clergy and women, and clarifying the procedures for the treatment of prisoners. The king, it was later reported, toured the lines every night, praising those who had performed well, reprimanding those who had not. He set up a temporary royal chapel in which his chaplains sang Mass daily. He was determined to keep God on his side.
Harfleur had some thousand defenders. It was well protected by large walls and, to afford further defence, the townsmen had flooded the nearby River Lézarde, which flowed to the west and south before entering the Seine. The garrison refused to surrender. So it was subjected to relentless bombardment.
The siege lasted five weeks. It coincided with a heat wave. The English army lived in cramped, insanitary quarters, which were soon awash with rotting waste, decaying bodies and excrement. The flooded defences of the town became a stinking bog. Shigella dysentery broke out in both camps, especially the king’s, close to the swamp. Among the deaths on the English side were the Bishop of Norwich and Earl of Suffolk. Many others were severely incapacitated. The failure of a French attempt to break the siege by river and a limited English success in seizing one of the barbicans finally led the garrison to negotiate. Terms were agreed for surrender on 22 September if no French army had appeared by then. Hostages were handed over to the king: they were met under the city walls by a procession of the whole royal chapel in their finest copes, singing anthems of praise and thanksgiving. On the appointed day the keys were solemnly handed over to Henry sitting in majesty in his pavilion. The victor was magnanimous, although he subsequently expelled all citizens who refused to give their allegiance. The town was to be turned into a second Calais and immigrants were encouraged from England to populate it for the Crown.
It had taken longer than expected to reduce Harfleur. The cost had been high and supplies were dwindling. Henry, who had recruited an army for nine months in the field, had probably intended to move on to Rouen by this time, and then Paris. He was forced to change his plan. He knew that the dauphin had a large army east of Rouen, so he decided to march to Calais. On 26 September he challenged the dauphin to personal combat to settle their dispute. Not surprisingly, Louis did not even respond. Henry then repatriated all the sick and wounded – including the Earl of Arundel, who died shortly after arriving home, and his own brother, Thomas, who recovered. Having placed a garrison of 1,200 men with the artillery in Harfleur under the Earl of Dorset, he struck camp on 8 October. His total force now probably numbered no more than 9,000, which was considerably smaller than the original army – but still sizeable.
It is not certain whether Henry intended to force battle en route. The chaplain in his company, who wrote the Gesta Henrici Quinti with hindsight, stated that his liege had wished for battle so that the few could triumph over the many. Henry would certainly have been prepared for this eventuality, for the dauphin’s army lay between him and his destination. He may equally have hoped to have reached Calais without confrontation, but left it to God to decide.
The English army swung through Arques, bypassing Eu, and made for the ford over the Somme at Blanchetague. But the French reached there first. Rather than risk an engagement, Henry turned his troops inland and upstream, looking for another crossing point. All the time the enemy shadowed them along the far bank. Having optimistically planned for an eight-day march to Calais, supplies soon began to run short. The army resorted to living off the land. The king struggled to maintain discipline. Public example was made of one soldier who stole a pyx (a jewelled box for the consecrated sacrament) from a church – an incident immortalised by Shakespeare in Bardolph’s fate. On 19 October, they found an unguarded ford and were fortunate to make an unopposed crossing. The next day, as they marched north again, Henry accepted a formal challenge to battle on 24 October. Marching as rapidly as he could, he found the French drawn up beyond the village of Maisoncelle. By the time they reached the battlefield, the English were hungry and exhausted.
Overnight it poured with rain. At first light on St Crispin’s and St Crispinian’s day, the English took up defensive positions to await the French onslaught. They were arranged in the customary three battles, with archers deployed in between and to the flanks. The king, in command of the centre, dressed conspicuously, a crown on his helm to make sure that he was visible to the enemy. Later accounts and mythology make out that the English were outnumbered by five to one or more. Recent, closer analysis of the contemporaneous descriptions from both sides suggests that this was not the case. Against the 9,000 English combatants, the French fielded at least 12,000 and may be up to 15,000 (including a far greater number of non-combatants). The sense of greater disparity in the numbers probably arose from the fact that the French army was composed predominantly of fully armoured and mounted men-at-arms, amounting to about three-quarters of their number. On the English side the ratio was reversed, with archers outnumbering men-at-arms by three to one. In terms of elite troops, the English were indeed heavily outnumbered. Moreover, French reinforcements were still arriving on the morning of the 25th, and it was probably for this reason that they delayed attacking for several hours.
Battle began when Henry V ordered his men to move forward, in formation, either to take up new positions within firing range of the French or, more likely, to appear to be advancing to provoke an attack before dropping back. Moving the whole line was a dangerous manoeuvre for it entailed the archers wading through mud, either carrying their protective stakes with them or leaving them behind. But the manoeuvre achieved its objective of provoking the French vanguard (larger, in fact, than the main guard) to attack. They had not chosen their ground wisely. Their army was cramped between two woods, the village of Agincourt being on their right. As they advanced in two huge battle lines, one behind the other, they were funnelled closer together and became easier targets for the hail of English arrows. Moreover, the ploughed field across which they and their horses attempted to charge was soon turned into a mud bath.
As it approached, the advancing French phalanx split into three columns, throwing themselves at each of the English battle lines. The archers maintained a constant hail of shot, from the front and into their flanks, at ten or more a minute, until their arrows were all used. Bolts like bullets could pierce armour at short range. The effect was similar to that of machine-gun fire five centuries later. Heavily armoured bodies piled on top of one another. Only a few made it through to Henry’s lines. Most successful was the column attacking the English right. The Duke of York, in command of that section, was killed along with several other notables before the assault was thrown back. The central column eventually reached the king, who fought long and hard, at one moment standing over and saving his youngest brother Humphrey who had fallen.
The battle became a massacre as the French finally lost impetus, the English advanced and the archers encircled their enemy in hand-to-hand fighting. Seeing the disaster unfolding before them, the French main guard held back. Late in the engagement a squadron of cavalry outflanked the English line and destroyed the baggage train. There was no question of pursuit. The English sorted the dead from the living in the piles of bodies before them, collected prisoners and moved them to the rear. At this moment, a report came to the king that the main guard was preparing to attack. Without seeking confirmation, he instantly ordered the killing of prisoners. In fact, no such second attack occurred; the main guard was withdrawing from the field.
English casualties were relatively low, the only noble deaths being the Duke of York and the Earl of Suffolk (he had been earl for but one month since succeeding his father who had died of dysentery on the campaign). A few hundred English foot soldiers were killed. Many more French died: 4,000 is the lowest estimate. Even allowing for the cold-blooded killing of some prisoners, at least 300 ‘men of name’ survived and possibly as many as a thousand, all told, came back to England to be ransomed. The French defeat was not down to overconfidence so much as poor leadership and tactics: battle plans had been changed at the last minute and the inexperienced 21-year old Duke of Orleans had put himself in command of the vanguard. Most of the other noblemen followed him so as not to be outdone in a show of courage, leaving no one of stature and tactical acumen to command the main guard.
Henry had overthrown the whole might of France, including Armagnacs and Burgundians united in the face of their old enemy. Neither the Dukes of Burgundy nor Brittany had fought, but their brothers had led contingents. Burgundy’s brother had been killed and Brittany’s taken prisoner (like Orleans, another survivor not murdered on the field). This was indeed a famous victory, if not quite so much against the odds as later mythology has made it. It was, however, marred by the massacre of the prisoners, for which many have endeavoured to exculpate Henry, either in terms of the strict laws of war or of military necessity.
Agincourt was a decisive battle. It was the high point of the domination of the longbow in battlefield tactics. It established Henry V’s chivalric and martial fame, and made him a general feared and respected by his enemies. The French were, for the rest of his life, exceedingly wary of facing the English in open, formal battle. The battle’s lasting fame, greater than the comparable victory at Crécy, is probably because Henry V assiduously associated it with national endeavour and national glory, for ‘Harry, England and St George’. A miraculous victory snatched from the jaws of defeat, celebrated in popular song and verse, especially The Agincourt Carol, and commemorated every year with an anniversary service of thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey, the Battle of Agincourt rapidly became and has remained a symbol of English national pride.
The road to Calais was now open. There was no time for Christian burial of the dead, English or French. The English were cremated, apart from those lords whose bodies were boiled down for the return home. The French, stripped for loot, were left where they lay. Henry’s army arrived in Calais on 29 October. It took several days for the weary troops to cross the Channel. The king himself did not sail until mid-November and suffered a very rough crossing. From Dover he made stately progress, stopping at Canterbury to give thanks for his victory, and arriving on Blackheath a week later, where he was formally welcomed by a delegation from the city of London. His triumphal entry into the capital on 23 November along the accustomed route for such victory parades was carefully orchestrated according to his advance instructions. The images of a giant and of St George were placed on London Bridge. The city conduits flowed with wine. Church bells rang out and beacons were lit. The dominant theme was ‘Praise to God’, while the king himself rode with just a few companions, modestly and simply attired. His noble French prisoners followed behind, though not in chains as they would have in a Roman triumph.
A parliament had been called and met (4–17 November) in his absence. A grateful House of Commons voted the king all of the revenue from customs for the rest of his life, together with another round of additional subsidies. All doubts about Henry’s right to rule had been obliterated in the muddy field of Agincourt.