The Victory at Agincourt

On the 24th October 1415 a force of 6,000 English and Welsh soldiers belonging to Henry V's army catastrophically defeated a French army five times its size. Most of Henry's men were footsoldiers. They faced the massed ranks of France's mounted nobility - heavily-armed knights whose whole lives had been devoted to training for battle, equipped with the best armour, weapons and horses in Europe. By the evening thousands of them would lie in heaps on the battlefield. The English lost 200.

How did Henry's army win a decisive victory against such overwhelming odds? In English mythology, for which we have to thank William Shakespeare and Laurence Olivier, it was due to inspired leadership and better morale. The English also had a technical advantage: the devastating fire of the English and Welsh archers, who could put twelve aimed arrows into the air every minute, gave Henry's army a formidable weapon which the French could not match. But the French knew all about English archery - it had decimated their armies twice before, at Crecy and Poitiers - and their battle-plan hinged on a cavalry charge to annihilate the bowmen right at the outset.

It is still hard to see how the English soldiers, who by St Crispin's Day were a remnant of the host brought over the Channel by 1,600 ships two months before, could have made mincemeat of France's best and bravest. They were wet, cold and hungry. Many were ill, and many more of their comrades had died or been sent back to England as a result of the dysentery which rampaged through their ranks. As far as the English were concerned, their armed incursion into France had proved its point, and now they were on their way home.

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