[Archers] Agincourt, 25 October 1415
fenrisulven at comcast.net
fenrisulven at comcast.net
Tue Oct 25 05:51:44 PDT 2011
You know you're an archer when *this* [see attached] is your desktop background :)
Cheers
Fen
"Atlantian Archery. Nothing exists within 100 yards without our permission"
----- Original Message -----
From: "Garth Groff" <ggg9y at virginia.edu>
To: archers at seahorse.atlantia.sca.org, isenfir at virginia.edu, atlantia at atlantia.sca.org
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 7:25:17 AM
Subject: [Archers] Agincourt, 25 October 1415
Noble friends,
Today is St. Crispin's Day, 25 October. This is the anniversary of the
Battle of Agincourt in 1415 during the Hundred Years war against France.
On this day, Henry V's small English army turned to face a much larger
French force on ground the English king had carefully selected. The
English army consisted of about 5,000 English and Welsh archers, and
about 1,000 dismounted knights and men-at-arms. The English army was
hungry and wracked by dysentery. The French army was the flower of their
chivalry, with over 1,200 of their finest mounted knights, at least
10,000 heavy men-at-arms afoot, supported by several thousand common
infantry and crossbowmen. The French army may have numbered as many as
36,000 men.
Henry had chosen his battlefield well, a rise at the end of a narrow
freshly plowed field, with thick woods to either side. After being
galled by long distance arrow volleys, the French were finally goaded
into charging into this death trap. The English archers poured clouds of
arrows into the packed men-at-arms who were already struggling through
the thick mud. The press became so severe in front of the English lines
that the French had little room to swing their weapons. When a French
knight or soldier fell, few could rise again from the mud before the
were trampled by their own men pressing forward.
By the end of the day, between 7,000-10,000 Frenchmen lay dead in the
mud, with another 1,500 taken prisoner. The finest army of France had
been crushed. It took several years (and thousands of Scottish
mercenaries) to rebuild the French forces. English losses were put at
just over 100 men.
The Battle of Agincourt is often described as the greatest triumph of
the English longbowman. It was not the first in France during the
Hundred Years War, nor would it be the last (many of those Scots would
later die from English arrows).
If you would care to learn more about this great battle, Wikipedia has a
very good summary with some interesting illustrations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Agincourt .
Kind regards,
Lord Mungo Napier, A Scot Who Is Thankful He Wasn't There
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