For educational purposes
Outnumbered by six to one and weakened by sickness and disease, the English army at Agincourt should have been no match for their confident French enemy.
But the day would be won by sheer pluck and the fearsome English longbow.
Outnumbered by six to one and weakened by sickness and disease, the English army at Agincourt should have been no match for their confident French enemy.
But the day would be won by sheer pluck and the fearsome English longbow.
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00:00You
00:30In war, there are no golden rules.
00:51On an autumn Friday in the year 1415, an English king led his army into combat, knowing that
00:58he was vastly outnumbered by his French adversaries.
01:08That morning, on a narrow stretch of ploughed field near the French village of Agincourt,
01:14the English men of King Henry V formed into position.
01:22Men at arms in the centre, archers on the flanks.
01:26In total, around 6,000 men, commanded by a young monarch who had already proved himself
01:33a leader.
01:37But the task that now faced King Henry V was daunting.
01:43Facing him was the cream of French chivalry, the finest knights of the land at the head
01:49of a force some 30,000 strong.
01:53Two armies, seemingly mismatched, were about to write the latest chapter of the Hundred
01:59Years' War.
02:02For the French, the day would be a national disaster.
02:07For the nation of England, it would be an almost unsurpassed day of glory.
02:28Henry V's victory at Agincourt in 1415 must rank as the greatest achievement of an English
02:34king in warfare.
02:36It also had a pretty dramatic effect on English position in France for the next 20 to 30 years.
02:45And in the context of the Europe of the 15th century, it was a very unexpected victory.
02:51The Kingdom of France was the premier kingdom.
02:57The Hundred Years' War is the name given to the series of military conflicts between France
03:02and England between 1337 and 1453.
03:08Agincourt is the most famous battle of the war.
03:12But the events of 1415 had their origins as far back as 1066, when William the Conqueror
03:20plundered the throne of England and created a political problem that would plague Anglo-French
03:26relations for centuries.
03:30William, as Duke of Normandy, controlled a large area of French territory.
03:37In 1154, William's great-grandson, Henry II, became King of England, and as Henry had married
03:46the divorced Queen of France, he secured her French territories.
03:52The King of England now possessed more French land than the King of France.
03:59By the year 1337, the dispute between the two nations had erupted into open conflict.
04:07That year, the French King Philip VI seized the English territory of Guienne.
04:16In 1338, England's King Edward III led an army into northern France, and the Hundred
04:23Years' War had begun.
04:27The confrontation was further inflamed by Edward's claim that, through his mother,
04:32he was actually the rightful King of France.
04:37Seventy years of war and occasional peace later, these rival claims over territory and
04:42succession had still not been resolved.
04:48But in 1413, a new English king came to the throne.
04:55It was this young king who would lead his nation at the Battle of Agincourt.
05:02King Henry V.
05:05Henry V was the complete soldier.
05:08He had been knighted in 1399, aged only 13, and he fought his first battle, aged 16, at
05:15Shrewsbury in 1403, when he was wounded in the face, and yet fought on in order to support
05:20his father's claim to the throne.
05:23In the succeeding decade, he learnt all the rules of siege warfare, defeating rebellion
05:28in Wales.
05:30He really was a most accomplished soldier, and he was both a strict disciplinarian and
05:34a charismatic commander.
05:38He also has the common touch.
05:41When he was Prince Howell, he really acquired some affinity with the people, which he always
05:48retained.
05:49This led him in good stead when he became a leader, because he then could associate
05:55with the soldiers and knew what they wanted.
05:58So in that sense, he was a pious man, a dedicated man, a good leader.
06:07As soon as Henry had ascended the throne, it was obvious that his ambitions lay across
06:13the English Channel in France.
06:16By a weird quirk of genealogy, not only could Henry V claim to be King of England and ruler
06:29of a lot of France, but he could actually claim to be the rightful King of France.
06:35The kingship of France was in dispute, and he had a claim through his great-great-grandmother,
06:43who was Isabella, the she-wolf of France.
06:45And through Isabella, Henry V claimed that he ought to be King of France.
06:52Henry demanded the French throne and marriage to the French king's daughter.
06:59He knew he was unlikely to realize these ambitions through the formal negotiations that began
07:05shortly after his accession.
07:08So he also began to prepare for war.
07:12Men and knights of the realm were contracted to join an army, bringing with them their
07:17retinues of fighting men.
07:20In total, around 2,500 men-at-arms.
07:27They were joined by some 8,000 other soldiers, included because of their mastery of the most
07:34deadly weapon of medieval warfare, the longbow.
07:41The longbow was itself about six feet tall and fired an arrow which was about three feet
07:46long with a metal tip.
07:48It had an advantage over the bows that were used, for example, at Hastings.
07:53The range of them were about 100 yards.
07:55So one of the great advantages of the longbow was it had a range of about 400 yards.
08:01It was very easily handled in comparison to the French weapon, which was the crossbow,
08:05which was a rather complicated piece of equipment, which took a minute to loose off one of its
08:10shafts, called a quarrel.
08:12In that time, an English archer could shoot off 12 or 20, if he wished.
08:16It did mean, though, that he had to train from a very young age.
08:20This was actually dictated by statute, by law, in England.
08:24The French were unwilling to equip their peasantry in the same way because they feared rebellion
08:28against the crown.
08:32By the summer of 1415, Henry's preparations for war were complete, and he prepared to
08:39set sail from Southampton on his flagship, the Trinite Royale.
08:47The negotiations were now over.
08:51It was said that they concluded with a French diplomat presenting King Henry with a box
08:56of tennis balls, implying that sport was a better pastime for a young king than war.
09:05On Sunday 11th August 1415, King Henry's army began its journey to France, at its date
09:12with destiny at Agincourt.
09:16The Trinite Royale led an armada of ships into the English Channel.
09:21As well as the fighting troops, they had to carry support personnel, including engineers
09:28and priests.
09:30The fleet also transported the huge quantity of material required for a successful military
09:36campaign.
09:38This would have included the huge siege guns, and perhaps as many as 20,000 horses.
09:48After three days at sea, this enormous force had successfully crossed the Channel, entering
09:54the estuary of the River Seine, south of the town of Harfleur.
10:00Henry's plan was very simple, it was take Harfleur.
10:04Then there were several options that no doubt he'd considered.
10:08One possibility would have been a march to the south to link up with the few remaining
10:12English possessions from the once mighty Duchy of Gascony.
10:17Another possibility would have been to march north, and to go to Calais, which the English
10:23held.
10:24The response of the French leadership to Henry V's invasion was indecisive.
10:30The King, Charles VI, was mentally unstable, only occasionally lucid and incapable of command.
10:37This meant the armies in the field were led by two of the officers of his court, the Marshal
10:42and the Seneschal.
10:44In addition, there were two political parties, the Burgundians and the Armagnacs in the country,
10:50who had actually been engaged in civil war, so France was not well led.
11:00It took two days for Henry's army to disembark, but once this was achieved, the English king
11:07moved quickly in pursuit of his objectives.
11:11He ordered that the people of Harfleur surrender their town, but the townsfolk knew that their
11:17town was well defended, its strong walls reinforced with some 26 towers and a moat, and breached
11:25only by three gates, which were themselves protected.
11:31The surrounding area also favoured the defenders.
11:34The land was marshy, and made even more difficult by deliberate defensive flooding.
11:41King Henry now had only one choice.
11:46He would have to take Harfleur by siege.
11:53On 18th August, the siege of Harfleur began in earnest, with the capture of the land east
12:00of the town, by men led by the Duke of Clarence.
12:05The town was now surrounded.
12:08English troops to the east and west, flooded land north and south, across which small English
12:14boats travelled to maintain contact with each other.
12:20Now Henry had to decide which siege tactics to use.
12:26The moat prevented the use of one widely used weapon, the battering ram, so Henry decided
12:32to undermine the integrity of Harfleur's walls by deploying his miners to the east
12:38of the town.
12:40Their intention?
12:42To dig shafts beneath the town walls and then start fires, causing the wall to collapse.
12:49It was already a well-established technique, but the English miners were thwarted by French
12:55counter-mining, and repeated Sally is out of Harfleur by men of the town's garrison.
13:05The English commander was now aware that the capture of the town would take time, and it
13:11would require the deployment of the most massive weapons of his time, the siege artillery.
13:25The siege of Harfleur, in addition to traditional catapults and other older types of siege engines,
13:33the English had guns, they had big guns, big siege guns, twelve foot long, two feet across,
13:41they could fire whole millstones at the walls of the town, they could take big rocks, I
13:47mean quite a big, you could put a 500 pound rock into one of these guns, they'd cover
13:51them with tow and pitch and light them on fire, and shoot them into the town to set
13:56buildings on fire.
13:58Tremendously powerful weapons, but these are craft weapons, they're built one by one by
14:03craftsmen, so you can't have too many of them, take a long time to make, they're very expensive,
14:09and gunpowder was very hard to come by, making gunpowder was also a craft, so you had very
14:14few of these big guns, and very little powder to fire from.
14:21They're pretty primitive, large, immobile, short range weapons, I don't think in terms
14:28of a modern artillery piece throwing a shell 20 miles, a late medieval cannon will throw
14:35a large ball of stone, about 800 metres maybe.
14:44For weeks, the English artillery pounded the walls of Harfleur, their fire concentrated
14:50on the gate to the south west of the town.
14:55If this well protected opening could be destroyed, the town was there for the taking.
15:01Day after day, huge stones rained down.
15:07The impact was devastating, but Harfleur's defenders stood up bravely to the onslaught.
15:15Brave salliers out of the town continued to harass the besieging forces, and by mid-September
15:22the town had still not fallen.
15:29But the south west gate was now on the point of collapse, despite heroic efforts to preserve
15:35it.
15:38The besieged citizens accepted the inevitable and, following another huge artillery bombardment,
15:45they agreed to surrender.
15:49Under the laws of chivalry, this saved their town from a sacking by the English.
15:55On the 23rd of September, King Henry rode into Harfleur.
16:03He had achieved his first victory on foreign soil, but the price had been high.
16:11It had taken five hard weeks to capture the town.
16:17The main difficulties of siege warfare are actually keeping your besieging force in the
16:23field, making sure that it's properly supplied.
16:26Now, in fact, Henry had a good chance here because he could have ships coming across
16:29the channel and providing food.
16:32Water's always a big problem.
16:33In fact, it was probably water that led to the spread of dysentery in his army, which
16:39killed about a third, killed or incapacitated a third, and this was both ordinary soldiers
16:46and the great nobles, they weren't spared.
16:50One in five of Henry's army died, and they were yet to engage the full French army, which
16:58was right then organising itself in response to the English venture.
17:05At Saint-Denis, on the 10th of September, King Charles VI ceremonially raised the oriflame,
17:14the French war standard.
17:17The pride of two nations was now at stake.
17:23Aware of his weaknesses, Henry abandoned his original idea of heading south to Bordeaux.
17:30A new objective was required.
17:34His first thought was typical of the chivalric age.
17:38He proposed to settle the whole French dispute in single combat with Dauphin Louis, the French
17:45king's 19-year-old son.
17:49But when Louis refused the challenge, Henry decided to head for the English port of Calais,
17:56one hundred miles to the north, leaving behind a garrison, some 1,500 strong, to secure his
18:03new English possession.
18:09On the 8th of October, Henry V left Harfleur with his original army of 10,000 men, now
18:16reduced to 6,000.
18:22In pouring rain, they headed north along the coast.
18:26In the days that followed, the English advanced steadily towards the river Somme, with only
18:32occasional skirmishing to distract them.
18:37To facilitate the potentially difficult crossing of the Somme, Henry had ordered the English
18:42captain of Calais to send a force of men to secure the ford at Blanchetac.
18:51But when the vanguard captured a prisoner while just six miles south of the crossing,
18:56a terrible truth dawned upon the English, for the captured man revealed that a force
19:02of some 6,000 Frenchmen were waiting for them across the river.
19:12There was only one credible option for the English army.
19:16They would have to turn inland and attempt to cross the Somme at some other point.
19:26But Henry's troops were now soaked and weary.
19:30Dysentery still persisted.
19:33Rations secured at Harfleur were now running out, and the French were present in large
19:38numbers along the north bank of the Somme.
19:42This was the advance guard of the French army, under the command of two talented commanders,
19:49Jean Boussicault, a Marshal of France, and Charles d'Albray, a constable.
20:01Another gruelling march now loomed, and on the 13th of October, Henry's dispirited force
20:08began to move inland along the path of the Somme.
20:13Unsurprisingly, many of Henry's men began to suffer a loss of morale, but their commander
20:19was able to maintain firm discipline, as he had done since the start of the expedition.
20:27Henry was clearly an effective leader, partly because, and this is becoming less common
20:35in the 15th century, that he was a leader who led from the front.
20:40He was a warrior as well as a general.
20:44He's also an effective leader because he seems to have been quite good at communicating to
20:49his men about their circumstances and what they're doing.
20:53He was determined that his troops would behave well.
20:56He issues a series of ordinances which each soldier has to obey, and in particular, because
21:02he is of course, says he has a just cause, and he's got the support of the church, he
21:07is very, very strong against people who violate church property.
21:12That's why the person that is recorded as being hanged for stealing from a church is
21:18highlighted in Shakespeare's play.
21:21Undoubtedly, it was his personality, his determination, his ruthlessness that made that army the disciplined
21:29body that it was.
21:32King Henry was again able to maintain order when he added to the burden on his prime fighting
21:37men.
21:40Realising they were vulnerable to French cavalry attack, he ordered each man to cut themselves
21:46six foot wooden stakes that could be sharpened at both ends and that could be hammered into
21:52the ground to form a defence against French horse.
22:00But as in Corps, the value of these wooden stakes would be clearly seen.
22:06But as the march along the Somme continued, their sheer weight must have depressed a body
22:12of men already reduced to living on nuts and berries.
22:17But despite these privations, by the 18th of October, the English had reached the village
22:24of Nesle, with the French military only occasionally revealing themselves.
22:32That night, Henry discovered that two fords over the river were unguarded just two miles
22:38away at Voyennes and Bettencourt.
22:44The following day, the ragged English force at last crossed the Somme and morale received
22:50a welcome boost.
22:55The movements of the French forces during the English march along the Somme are not
23:00entirely clear, but we know the French advance guard under Boussicou and Dalbray were in
23:07a position north of the Somme, following the English as they moved inland.
23:13On the 14th of October, the main French army set off north-east towards Henry's forces,
23:20reaching the city of Amiens just after the English had left the area.
23:26The full French army now joined up, a total of perhaps 30,000 men.
23:33But it was not led by their king, the unfortunate Charles VI, or his son, the Dauphin.
23:41In fact, it was hardly led at all.
23:48The French command structure was not just weak, it was non-existent.
23:52The supposed leaders were the Marshal, a man called Boussicou, and the Seneschal, Dalbret,
23:59but they were just officers of the household and they had to compete with nobles of the
24:05royal line, like Alençon and Orléans, and in actual fact, on the day of the battle,
24:11it was they who took charge.
24:13So really, it was a complete mess.
24:17Jean Boussicou and Charles Dalbret were undeniably talented military commanders, and they argued
24:25that the best way to beat the invading Englishmen was to avoid an open battle altogether.
24:32Instead, the invaders should be harried and denied supplies by a so-called scorched earth
24:38approach.
24:41But theirs were just two voices amongst the fragmented French military leadership.
24:46Noblemen, such as the Duke of Berry, the Duke of Burgundy, and his bitter rival, the Duke
24:53of Orléans, favoured a more aggressive approach.
24:58It was their view which prevailed.
25:01On Sunday, the 20th of October, three French heralds rode to the English camp at Attique.
25:09Their mission?
25:11To formally challenge King Henry to battle.
25:14It seems to me a flaw was that if your aim was to weaken the enemy, you should be constantly
25:21attacking him with your troops, which are an overwhelming majority.
25:28He's probably only got somewhere in the region of 6,000 men.
25:33You've got the region of 20,000 to 25,000 men.
25:36Why are you not trying to attack him in a series of battles and weaken him, rather than
25:41trying to wait for one particular battle?
25:44There are flaws in both the leadership and the plan.
25:50King Henry's response to the challenge made by the French heralds was defiant.
25:55He told them that Calais was his destination and warned the French not to attempt to stop
26:01him.
26:02Were they to do so, a great shedding of Christian blood would be the consequence.
26:10The heralds rode off, leaving the English to prepare for battle.
26:15Armour was donned and bowstrings tested.
26:19The men went to the priests to make final confessions and, although their commander
26:25appeared confident, he must have shared some of the fears of his troops.
26:32He was outnumbered by five to one in an enemy country.
26:38So it was that on the morning of Monday, the 21st of October, 1415, he waited for the French
26:45army and the defining moment of his life.
27:01However it slowly became clear that no attack was forthcoming.
27:07So in the afternoon, King Henry and his men resumed their march towards Calais.
27:16On the 23rd, the English crossed the river Canche, past Frevent.
27:23The following day, the Ternoise was crossed near Blangy.
27:34On the far side of the river, Henry's advance scouts could at last see the huge force that
27:40opposed them.
27:43The moment of battle was less than 24 hours away.
27:56That night, King Henry made his camp near the tiny village of Maison Selle, while the
28:02vastly bigger French army positioned itself near the village that would give its name
28:08to the battle to come, Agincourt.
28:24On the morning of Friday, the 25th of October, 1415, on a ploughed field in northern France,
28:32a treaty was about to be made.
28:35A last-ditch attempt by King Henry to secure a negotiated settlement was dismissed by the
28:41French, and by eight o'clock, both sides had drawn up into their battle positions,
28:471,000 yards apart.
28:55The French forces were organized into three divisions, with the vanguard comprising some
29:008,000 men-at-arms, drawn from the highest ranks of French society, armoured men steeped
29:08in the traditions of the age of chivalry.
29:12Unknown to them, it was an age drawing to its end.
29:24The problem at the Battle of Agincourt was that the French still thought they were fighting
29:30simply a chivalrous battle.
29:33That's why a large number of their men-at-arms got into the front rank, because what they
29:37thought they were going to do was go and capture a few people for ransom.
29:43Unfortunately, there weren't many men-at-arms on the other side, as it were.
29:48I think there were two separate ideas going on.
29:50It wasn't essentially a battle between knights.
29:55The upper class French men-at-arms were nominally commanded by Constable d'Albray, though he
30:02had little influence upon their actions once fighting began.
30:07This elite vanguard was flanked by cavalry, and it was these two contingents who would
30:13lead the French attack.
30:16Behind them were the men of the second French division.
30:20Similar in size to the vanguard, this division is likely to have included the several thousand
30:26French crossbowmen and archers.
30:29Finally, a large reserve cavalry division was positioned in the rear, to be brought
30:36into action when the English had been put to rout.
30:40French confidence was understandable.
30:43The army that opposed them was but a fraction of the size of their own.
30:51In the English positions, behind a wall of protective stakes, King Henry took command
30:58of the centre, leading a contingent of men-at-arms, with the Duke of York to his right and Lord
31:05Camois to the left.
31:08In total, the English centre numbered a mere 1,000 men.
31:16It was on the flanks that real English strength was deployed, a total of 5,000 archers.
31:30Before the battle, King Henry rode before his lines to inspire his men, and sought especially
31:37to inspire his bowmen.
31:40He reminded them that the French had made a grim promise to cut off three fingers from
31:46the right hand of any captured English archer, in order that they could never fire a bow
31:52again.
31:55As they listened to the words of their king, many of the English archers must have wondered
32:00what their fate would be.
32:03But at least there was one small sign to reassure them.
32:07Their young king was wearing no spurs.
32:11Henry would therefore be fighting on foot, alongside his fellow countrymen.
32:21It's difficult to believe that Henry looked out on the morning of the Battle of Agincourt
32:26and was 100% optimistic.
32:29The odds were against him, he's a formidable host, he's still quite a long way from Calais,
32:35and he's going to fight a battle that he clearly would rather not have to fight.
32:39However in some ways history is on Henry's side.
32:43Previous large set-piece engagements in the Hundred Years' War had on the whole been favourable
32:48to the English.
32:50And both the Battle of Crecy and the Battle of Poitiers, fought by Edward III and his
32:55son the Black Prince, both of them outnumbered English armies and inflicted quite spectacular
33:01defeats on the French.
33:03Henry V was an experienced commander.
33:06He knew that war is chaotic.
33:08He knew that anything can happen on a battlefield.
33:11He had to have known that.
33:13And as a result, I think that King Henry V knew that he could win.
33:25As the morning passed, the two armies maintained their positions.
33:30The French knew that sooner or later the English would be compelled to come forward.
33:37It was not a mistaken view.
33:40Henry now consulted his senior commanders and a fateful decision was made.
33:47At 11 o'clock, Henry gave the order for the protective stakes to be removed from the ground.
33:55The Englishmen crossed themselves, kissed the ground and marched in good order towards
34:01the enemy.
34:04They were outnumbered by five to one.
34:13About 250 yards from the French line, the English advance halted.
34:20The wooden stakes were planted once more and the archers were given the order to attack.
34:29In response, the French vanguard began its advance while the flanking cavalry rode to
34:35engage the English bowmen.
34:39The Battle of Agincourt had begun.
34:58The French, in approaching English at the Battle of Agincourt, are confined in two different
35:03sorts of ways.
35:06The ground itself, which is very wet and freshly ploughed, is quite hard to move through
35:12in heavy plate armour.
35:16Also on either side of the English line there are fairly thick woods that make it hard to
35:21bypass the English and indeed tend to channel the French towards the centre of the English line.
35:30Now that's the only sort of position that an army as badly outnumbered as the English
35:34could have actually defended.
35:39From the beginning the battle was ferocious, with the French feeling the brunt of the fighting.
35:46Both of the initial French manoeuvres had failed.
35:53As thousands of English arrows descended from the skies, the advancing French centre found
35:59itself hampered by the muddy ground and by the fact that their line contained too many
36:05men for a relatively narrow battlefield.
36:12On the flanks, the French cavalry was also soon in trouble.
36:17It was almost impossible for the mounted soldier to move amongst the stakes as the English
36:23bowmen continued their merciless rate of fire.
36:28There was actually a plan for defeating the English army by using a double envelopment
36:33of cavalry attacks which would drive off the archers and then leave the English men-at-arms
36:37to be beaten by a larger number of the French.
36:40Unfortunately this didn't work on the day and one reason was that the French cavalry
36:45did not expect the stakes that were used at the Battle of Agincourt and therefore they
36:50were unable to ride the archers down, they ended up impaled on the stakes instead.
37:03After a matter of minutes, the French cavalry were forced into bloody retreat.
37:09But there was only one place they could retreat to, back into the advancing lines of their
37:14own vanguard, which was itself already reeling from the impact of the English arrows.
37:22As riderless horses caused mayhem in the ranks, the 2nd Division began to move forward into
37:28the crush.
37:32In the centre, the leading French men-at-arms eventually ploughed their way to the English
37:38line.
37:39The result was fierce hand-to-hand combat with axe, spear, pole and sword, with Henry
37:47himself at the heart of the action.
38:05The French also fought bravely, but many of their finest soldiers simply lacked the
38:10room to fight effectively, while all the time the English arrows rained down relentlessly
38:17upon them.
38:19The archers are utterly essential at Agincourt to understanding the English victory.
38:24It's the archers that provoke the French to committing themselves to an attack.
38:29It's the archers that then bring, within minutes, the French cavalry charge which starts the
38:33battle properly into ruin.
38:37And the archers then cause immense chaos when the main French van advances on foot.
38:44They could have firing arrows at 10 per minute and they inflict enormous damage.
38:49And of course subsequently, even though the archers are lightly armed, they're well placed
38:54to intervene in the fighting on the ground, the hand-to-hand fighting, because the French
38:57are so tightly packed together that their heavy armour and their heavy weapons become
39:02a liability, not an asset, in the face of the more lightly armoured but more mobile
39:07archers.
39:09It's interesting that the French didn't seem to use their missile arm at all.
39:12They did actually have a number of crossbowmen and they had a plan for putting them in the
39:16front rank and using them to counter the English archers, but on the day the French were so
39:22overconfident that they were just going to capture the English king, get all the ransoms
39:26from him and his men, that they pushed their own crossbowmen back behind the lines where
39:31they were ineffective.
39:33So they really didn't take part.
39:39We can only guess at King Henry's thoughts as the fighting continued all around him.
39:45The front line was now a mass of dead and wounded bodies, and the vast majority of them
39:50were French.
39:52Their decimated vanguard had been forced back into their own advancing second division,
39:58a development which had served only to further hamper their ability to fight.
40:05To add to their difficulties, their entire leadership was now lost.
40:13The cream of French nobility lay amongst the heaps of dead that defined the battlefield
40:20after what was possibly as little as half an hour's fighting.
40:25Constable d'Albray was dead.
40:28Marshal Boussicault was captured.
40:32The French battle standard was lost.
40:35The result of the battle was now virtually certain.
40:39Many in the French rear began to drift away while they still could.
40:44The third division chose not to engage at all and began to break up without a fight.
40:51The French had been routed, but the killing was not yet over.
41:04By early afternoon, King Henry was all but victorious, but he could not be completely
41:10certain that his enemy would not regroup to join battle once more.
41:16The Dukes of Alençon and Bas exhorted their fellow Frenchmen to continue the fight.
41:22One brave group of French nobles did succeed in organizing a mounted counterattack, while
41:28many of their fellow men were already fleeing from the scene.
41:33But the seemingly triumphant Henry now received serious news.
41:40He was told that an isolated French force had attacked his baggage train in the rear.
41:47Now prior to the battle, he had got wind of what the French battle plan was.
41:52Their initial phase was that they would attack his archers with their cavalry, but they would
41:58also send cavalry around the back, around the outside, to attack his baggage train.
42:04And what he now thought was, this was the French putting a second phase of their battle
42:09plan into action.
42:11They were not beaten, they were not dispersed, they had a large number of troops ready to
42:15attack him, and here was that cavalry going round to cause confusion in his baggage train.
42:21As a result, he decided to eliminate the threat of French prisoners taking up arms against him.
42:28And he said that they would have to be killed.
42:32However, Henry's men-at-arms and knights refused to carry out the bloody task.
42:37They could not bring themselves to slaughter men of their own class.
42:43At the time, and in the circumstances of Agincourt, killing prisoners was a dubious thing for
42:49several reasons.
42:51Simply because at the time the chivalric code actually said you should spare a fellow
42:59Christian knight who surrendered.
43:01Secondly, and much more importantly of course, if you'd taken a knight prisoner, that made
43:07you a potentially much wealthier person.
43:10And if you were a relatively humble man-at-arms, and you had a French count as your prisoner,
43:16it's a bit like winning the national lottery nowadays is.
43:19So there was strong resistance to that sort of killing.
43:27In the end, Henry was compelled to call up his own bodyguard of Welsh archers to carry
43:34out the most controversial act of this bloodiest of battles.
43:40The reason that Henry chose the archers to carry out the task is that he could order
43:44them.
43:45They didn't have the same sense of honour as people who had been knighted, people of
43:51the elite military class.
43:53He instructed a squire to lead some 50 archers apparently to start the massacre.
43:59Now whether it was more a matter of just frog marching with a few people being killed to
44:04encourage them to do it quickly off the battlefield, or whether there was a more comprehensive
44:09slaughter, it's not quite so easy to say.
44:13But most modern accounts of the battle would now suggest that the massacre has been a little
44:19bit exaggerated traditionally.
44:24Long before sunset, it became clear that no successful French counter-attack was forthcoming,
44:32and the day belonged to King Henry V of England.
44:37He had won against all the odds, and it was his enemy which had been routed.
44:46Around 10,000 Frenchmen had lost their lives.
44:51Less than 300 Englishmen had shared their fate.
44:56It may have been as few as 100, with the Duke of York as the only prominent casualty from
45:02the nobility.
45:05Four days later, news of Henry's unlikely triumph reached London.
45:12In hours, church bells were ringing across England, celebrating one of the most remarkable
45:18military victories of all time.
45:23England hadn't done very well in the Hundred Years' War, so there was a fair amount of,
45:27if I put, call it national frustration.
45:31So at that level, the Battle of Agincourt not only reinforced Henry V's own position
45:37as king, but also made the English people feel good.
45:42Their morale rose, it gave them a sense of good being.
45:50The great victory at Agincourt marked the end of Henry's 1415 French campaign.
45:58His men were victorious, but they were also exhausted, and unlikely to be able to force
46:05further gains.
46:08He therefore headed for Calais as he had originally intended, before returning to England in triumph.
46:16The victory at Agincourt was remarkable in the context of the Hundred Years' War because
46:21it really was a decisive victory.
46:25As a result of it, and Henry's continued campaigning in Normandy, he was able to establish a colony
46:32in northern France, which lasted for the best part of two decades, and actually survived
46:39really into the middle part of the century.
46:43So it did have a dramatic effect.
46:47In 1420, the Treaty of Troy confirmed Henry V's marriage to the French king's daughter
46:54Catherine, and his new status as heir to the throne of France.
47:03But the French crown would never be his to wear.
47:07Two years later, he became ill while in France, planning a new crusade to the Holy Land.
47:15On the 31st of August 1422, King Henry V of England died.
47:22He was just 34 years of age.
47:28Henry's early death in 1422 meant that the whole fruits of the battle in the long term
47:35had been lost.
47:37Agincourt, in an odd way, it's the beginning of the end.
47:41It's not obvious after the battle itself, but it's the Indian summer of English influence
47:48in France.
47:51It was a victory of the few against the many.
47:54It was a defeated army pulling success out of the ashes, but there was no long-term English
48:02domination of big parts of France as a result.
48:06It was, in many ways, a bit of an isolated incident in the grand political scheme of
48:12things, and it was just a good day for the English soldiers.