A Brief History
On October 25, 1415, the Battle of Agincourt was fought between the English personally led by King Henry V and the French, led by representatives of King Charles VI, resulting in a history changing victory by the English over the greater numbers of the French.
Digging Deeper
The English army was manned by a preponderance of bowmen armed with the famed English longbow. A weapon much more powerful than the hunting bows of today, the longbow required a strong man trained over a long period of time to employ it properly. Designed for mass volleys rather than precision shots, the arrows were tipped with armor piercing steel points to counter the heavily armored French knights, many mounted on horses.
Contrary to the exaggeration sometimes seen in accounts of longbow versus armor, the arrows would not penetrate the best quality French steel armor, especially the breast plates and crown of the helmet. At close ranges, they could penetrate lower quality iron armor as well as the more lightly armored parts of the knights’ anatomy, such as the limbs and face. French knights were forced to fight with their visors down and to bow their heads toward the English to avoid getting an arrow in the face (as the visor was a vulnerable area of the armor), putting them at a disadvantage.
French knights were often mounted on horseback, and the horses were armored mainly only at the head. Bowmen shot their arrows into the flanks and other un-armored parts of the horses, causing the animals to run and buck wildly. The knights were thus relegated to fighting on foot, slogging through sticky mud in an exhausting march to battle.
King Henry V engaged in hand to hand fighting himself, almost assuredly an inspiration to his men, while the French King Charles VI did not have the physical ability to perform in combat, nor for that matter the mental capacity.
The English, numbering between 6000 and 9000 soldiers consisted of about 5/6 bowmen and 1/6 armored knights. The French, numbering between 12,000 and 30,000 had around 10,000 armored knights, about 1200 of which were mounted. The backdrop to the great battle was the Hundred Years War (1337-1453), a virtual Game of Thrones between the royal houses of France and England. The result of the English victory at Agincourt included the slaughter of thousands of French soldiers taken prisoner, as King Henry V feared the French reserves were about to mount a second assault.
Question for students (and subscribers): What other battles can you think of where technology played such an important role? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Barker, Juliet. Agincourt: Henry V and the Battle That Made England. Back Bay Books, 2007.
Curry, Anne. Agincourt (Great Battles). John Offord Pub Co, 2015.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="12113 https://www.historyandheadlines.com/?p=12113">21 Comments
English knights, Welsh archers, Irish light infantry. The archers hit the French out to 200 yards away. When charged by cavalry, they impaled the horses on stakes braced against the ground. The light Irish infantry then stabbed and slashed any knights stumbling on the ground. They moved at the speed of light, like devils in rags in the mud. They also guarded the knights taken for prisoners to ransom. As the French cavalry kept charging, the prisoners had to be killed or they would pick up their weapons from the ground and create havoc in the rear. France lost the flower of their aristocracy that day.
Topography was a problem for the French. They and the British marched on opposite banks of the river for days, taunting each other with insults. The French could clearly see that they had the advantage in numerical superiority. The night before they battle they got drunk and squabbled who would get to charge first and gain the most loot and trophies. Their attack was compressed into a narrow meadow between the woods, presenting only a small front at a time, unable to flank the British. It was a rainy night and they were bogged down in the mud.
Always a fight for land or gold!!
I can’t imagine being a French soldier having to clunk around on foot in heavy metal armor with impaired vision from a visor that seemed to serve relatively no purpose.
It really did put them at a major disadvantage but another important weapon brought to war was guns when the french used them against the English and destroyed their forces!
The armor could not have been easy to fight with.
I feel that armour would be fun to wear or to try fight in it to.
The English’s new battle technology and tactic coupled with their battle hardness after years of fighting the Scots left the French almost no match for them at that point in history.
I always wondered how they would fight in that Armour, it is crazy that they were able to do so.
I think today’s military equipment is extremely heavy…I do not even want to imagine how heavy it was to move with back then!!
Our military equipment today is so much more advanced when you think about it.
I think the disadvantages of the armor outweighed the advantages in many circumstances. It would have been a lot harder to travel and in some events, the armor didn’t even work.
It would really suck going into a battle with heavy-ass armor on only to find that it barely provides any useful means of protection.
I am so thankful for all our military advances and how our military does not have to wear all that heavy ass metal. It just weighs you down.
I couldn’t imagine having to wear all that Armour in battle.
I can’t imagine what soldiers during any war, on any side went through. The armor that was used in this battle seems unbearable!
That totally changed my perception of “Knights in Shinning Armor”
I could not imagine the bows being more powerful then todays ! With the materials and tools they had at the time that would be a huge accomplishment. I would like to learn more about the English longbow.
I could not imagine fighting battle in all that heavy armor.
the title reminds me of a fairy tale, but this is no fairy tale
i always did wonder what happened to armed knights