On the evening of St. Crispin’s Day, October 25, 1415, a small, starving,
and sick English army after winning an impressive victory over a
numerically superior French army near the little village of Agincourt,
about 45 miles south of Calais, celebrated Mass. Henry V, King of England
and commander of the 6,000 man army, had every reason to be
thankful as he had that morning pulled victory out of the jaws of defeat.
His Army had been deep in France, out of supplies, suffering from
dysentery, and had a large, fresh, French army between him and his
destination, Calais. Then, against all expectations, he had in a matter of
hours defeated the French and captured over 2000 prisoners, including
the Dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, the Count of Richmont, and the
French Marshall Boucicant.1

The next day, Henry continued his march to Calais, reaching the port
on the 29th. On November 16th, he and his army left for England. He
arrived in London on the 23rd to a tremendous welcome by the people
of the English capitol.

Even though Henry did not immediately follow up on his victory,
indeed he was lucky to have survived at all; it had tremendous repercussions,
both political and militarily, in both France and England.

After the defeat at Agincourt,
the French were in chaos. In
order to fully understand the
political situation, a little
background is needed. In 1380,
at the age of 12, Charles VI of
the House of Valois, became
king of France. After successfully
putting down several revolts by
peasants and nobles, he became
ill in 1393 with a recurring madness
that became more and
more frequent as he grew older.2
No one was appointed Regent
and it was never clear who was
to take the royal authority when
the King was in “his malady.” Two main factions developed.
One was headed by the Duke of Orleans and the Count of Armagnac,
the other was headed by the Duke of Burgundy. Henry’s success in
France was as much due to the infighting between these two great factions
as it was to his generalship.

In 1415 the Armagnac party, lead by Charles, Duke of Orleans, had
control of the King and of Paris. John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy,
was raising a large army and was looking for allies. Burgundy was to
remain inactive during the Agincourt campaign, even though his
youngest brother was killed in the final French charge at Agincourt.

It was an Armagnac army that was defeated at Agincourt and
Charles, Duke of Orleans, and most of the other Armagnac leaders
were either killed or captured. Needless to say, the Armagnac faction
was thrown into disorder by the defeat. King Charles was almost defenseless
in Rouen and on hearing the news the King is said to have
wept and cried “We be all dead and overthrown.”3

Henry’s withdrawal to Calais caught both factions off guard. The
Duke of Burgundy, not living up to his colorful nickname, cancelled
plans for a coup de main to gain control of Charles VI. The Armagnacs
were thus given time to regroup.

In December, 1415, Bernard VII, Count of Armagnac and the fatherin-
law of the Duke of Orleans (who was to remain in a very comfortable
captivity in England for the rest of Henry’s reign), was named the new
Constable of France and Governor for Charles of the Ile de France. This
made him, for all intents and purposes, Regent of France. He immediately
did two things. First, he hired a Genoese fleet of nine carracks
and eight galleys, plus 60 ships, of much lesser tonnage, from Castille.4

This fleet was to blockade the port of Harfleur, on the north mouth of
the Seine Estuary. Henry had captured the port in September, 1415,
after a siege lasting a little over a month. The siege was almost a disaster
for the English as disease swept their camp. The English lost, mostly to
disease, 2,000 men. After leaving a 1,000 man garrison, Henry was left
with approximately 6,000 men for his raid into France which led to the
victory at Agincourt.5 The second thing Armagnac did was to raise a
new army of 10,000 men. With this army, he laid siege to Harfleur. But,
after the defeat at the battle of Valmont and with John of Burgundy
threatening Paris again, Armagnac returned with his army to Paris. This
was the political situation when Henry landed with his army in 1417.

Agincourt was important to Henry on the “Home Front.” Although
Henry was popular at home with most of the population before he left
for France in 1415, the crown had ever rested uneasily on his head.
Once again a little background is necessary.

Henry’s father, Henry IV, had, in 1399, usurped the crown from his
cousin Richard II, the last of the Plantagenet Kings, and started the Lancaster
Line. Even though Richard died in prison, rumors of his escape
plagued Henry IV, and it wasn’t until Henry V had the body exhumed
early in his reign that the rumor was ended, once and for all. But, that
didn’t end Henry’s problems. A plot developed in 1415. now known as
the Southampton Plot. It was
hatched by supporters of Edmund
Mortimer, Earl of March,
the rightful heir to Richard II.
The plot called for the assassination
of Henry at Southampton,
where Henry was gathering the
army for the Agincourt campaign;
a simultaneous invasion
from Scotland; and a revolt in
Wales. The plot fizzled when
Edmund revealed the plan to
the King. It is not known why
Edmund talked, but he remained
a faithful retainer of
Henry and all the Lancasterns.6

Another equally serious problem was that of the Lollards, followers of
the heretical priest John Wyclif. Henry easily crushed a revolt in early
1414 when he learned of the Lollard’s gathering place. He reached the
site with his army before the Lollards and he arrested them as they
arrived piecemeal. Although this uprising was defeated, the Lollards
were not wiped out and they could still have caused Henry problems.

After Agincourt, Henry’s popularity reached such heights that he
never had to worry about revolt at home again.

England’s reputation also rose on the continent. Before Agincourt,
England was considered the backwater of Europe, with a usurper on the
throne, barbarian Welsh and Scots constantly revolting and heretics
(Lollards) running rampant. But, after Agincourt, things changed. The
English representative to the Council of Constance was instrumental in
getting Martin V elected pope and thereby ending the Great Schism that
had split the Church since 1378.

Even more important to Henry’s plan to press home his claim to the
crown of France was the visit of the Holy Roman Emperor, Sigismund,
to England from April to August, 1416. Henry negotiated the Treaty of
Canterbury with Sigismund. It was a joint offensive-defensive pact and
although Sigismund did not help Henry in France, he stayed neutral,
which was all that Henry wanted.7
In September, 1416, Henry and Sigismund met with John the Fearless
in Calais. An oral agreement was reached in which Burgundy would
support Henry when he returned to France. With these two new allies,
Henry was able to prepare for a new invasion of France in 1417.

Before Henry could set out on an expedition, he had to finance it.
Royal finances had always been a problem to medieval monarchs, and
Henry V was no exception. Before the Agincourt campaign, Henry had
to resort to forced ‘amicable’ loans. He even pawned the Crown Jewels
in order to meet expenses.8 But, after Agincourt, money flowed a lot
freer and Henry was able, in 1416-1417, to equip a much more powerful
army then he had in 1415.

When Henry landed in France on August 1, 1417, he was able to
conquer all of Lower Normandy (that part of Normandy south of the
Seine) without interference from the main Armagnac army, which was
forced to defend the Ile de France from the Burgundians.

By the spring of 1418, Henry had consolidated all of Lower Normandy
except the fortress of Mont St. Michel, which was never to fall to
the English. By the end of July, he was ready to lay siege to Rouen, the
capital of Normandy and the second largest city in France.

Henry found an unpleasant surprise when he laid siege to Rouen.
The garrison was not made up of Armagnacs but of his ‘allies’, the Burgundians.
Events in Paris had shifted the whole balance of power. In
June, 1418, the citizens of Paris revolted against the Armagnacs, the
Count himself was killed in the fighting. In July, John the Fearless entered
Paris and gained control of the King. The Armagnacs retreated
south with Charles, the Dauphin (crown prince) in tow. John immediately
started negotiations with the Armagnacs; a united France
would make Henry’s taks very difficult.

The siege of Rouen lasted over five months. Famine broke out in the
town by December. Twelve thousand noncombatants, mostly women,
children, and elderly, were expelled from the city. Henry did not let
them through the siege lines and they were left to rot in the City’s fosse.
Inside the walls “a slice of bread now cost a franc or a young girl’s
honor.”9 On New Year’s Day, 1419, after a mass sortie by the Garrison
failed, the City’s Burghers opened surrender negotiations. The talks
were finally concluded on January 13th and the City surrendered on
the 19th.

By May, Henry controlled all of Normandy and he started negotiations
with the Burgundians and the Dauphinists, as the Armagnacs were
now called. The Burgundians and the Dauphinists also continued to
negotiate. In July, 1419, a treaty was signed ending the differences between
Burgundy and the Dauphinists. A meeting was arranged between
John the Fearless and the young Dauphin on the Bridge of Montereau,
over the Seine about 40 miles south-east of Paris. They met on
the Bridge on September 10, 1419 and for reasons still unclear, someone
in the Dauphin’s party killed John the Fearless. This ended any
hope for a united France driving out Henry V. The new Duke of Burgundy,
Phillip the Good, was driven into the English camp. In his search
for vengeance, he was willing to sell out France to Henry. Phillip became
Henry’s close ally and supported Henry and his successors for the
rest of his life.

Negotiations between Phillip and Henry reached a successful conclusion
in April, 1420. On May 20th, the English Army entered Troyes,
about 100 miles south-east of Paris and Henry V, King of England, met
Charles VI, King of France. The next day in Troyes Cathedral, the treaty
was signed, with Charles’ wife, Queen Isabell, signing for France as
Charles was suffering from his madness. For all intents and purposes,
Henry had won the war. The treaty gave him everything he wanted. He
was declared Heir and Regent of France and the Crown was to pass
through Henry’s line. To seal the bargain, Henry was given the hand of
Charles’ daughter, Katherine, in marriage, and, unlike many royal
weddings, it appears as if the King and his new Queen really loved each
other.10

While the Treaty was a personal triumph for Henry, it also committed
England to long-term involvement in France. This involvement was to
have four main effects, all of which, in the long run, proved disastrous
for England and the Lancasterian line.

The military campaign to subdue the rest of France and to defend
what the English already held cost money. It had been shown earlier
how hard pressed Henry was for money. The real monetary crunch hit
in the years following Henry’s death. The English crown went bankrupt.
Even with the additional revenues of conquered French territory, the
Regents of Henry’s infant son, Henry VI, were unable to pay the troops.
The strength of any medieval king depended on his ability to dispense
favors. In the early Middle Ages, these favors were most often in the
form of land. By the Fifteenth Century, money was the most common
favor. As the weakness of the Crown became more apparent, the Nobles
became stronger. This lead to an increasing militarized nobility and
‘Bastard Feudalism’ (the paying of armed retainers in currency instead
of land, as in traditional feudalism) developed. This meant that each of
the Great Nobles of England soon had their own private army, independent
from the King.

Henry’s marriage to Katherine brought into the Lancasterian line the
tainted blood of Charles. Henry’s son, Henry VI, was to have the same
fits of madness that plagued his maternal grandfather. This, along with
the bankruptcy of the Crown and a strong militarized nobility, was to
lead directly to the War of the Roses.

The fourth effect of long term English involvement was the development
of French nationalism. France was to be rallied by a 17 year old
peasant girl, Joan of Arc. She was able to persuade Charles, the
Dauphin, to seek his birthright and to be crowned Charles VII. Charles
was able to expel the English and his son, Louis XI brought about a
revived French monarchy in the 1460’s.

So, the long term political effect of Agincourt was to cause England to
collapse into civil war and anarchy, while France was to recover from its
own civil disorders.

The most obvious military effect to come out of Agincourt was that
Henry was able to conquer northern France without facing the French
in open battle. Henry’s campaigns after Agincourt were wars of sieges.
After Agincourt, the English must have seemed invincible to the French
and the English must have felt that they were unbeatable. This cocky
attitude of the English led to the only two land battles to be fought
during the rest of Henry’s reign.

The first battle was the Battle of Valmont, fought from March 9th-
11th, 1416. Thomas Beaufort, the Earl of Dorset, foolishly led a raid of
1080 men-at-arms and archers from Harfleur. They were trapped by a
3,000 man Armagnac army two days from Harfleur, near the village of
Valmont. During a day long battle, Dorset was severely wounded and
he lost 250 men. At nightfall he was able to fall back towards Harfleur.
He was able to avoid detection until he was within sight of Harfleur, two
days later. There, the French caught up with them, and, rashly dismounting,
rushed down from the cliffs to a straight fight against the
exhausted infantry in the low-lying land below. The English had the
better of the hand-to-hand fighting, the French were routed, and the
English marched into Harfleur with 800 prisoners.11

This minor battle was nearly a major disaster because if Dorset had
been defeated, the French could have easily taken Harfleur as its garrison
had been depleted to provide men for the raid. The second battle,
fought after the Treaty of Troyes, was an English disaster. In March,
1421, Henry had gone back to England with his new bride, leaving
France in the hands of his younger brother, Thomas, Duke of Clarence.
In response to a raid of 5,000 French and Scots, he gathered an army of
4,000 men. On the night of March 22nd, while his archers were off
scavenging, Clarence learned that the French were in the village of
Bauge, only a few miles away. Clarence charged the French before the
archers could return, with about 500 men-at-arms. In the melee (it
hardly deserves to be called a battle) Clarence was killed and the English
were totally defeated. Only the Earl of Salisbuy, Henry’s best
general, was able to save the archers and allowed the army to retire to
Paris.12

Both battles, fought while Henry was in England, showed how the
victory at Agincourt had gone to the English’s head; both of the battles
were foolish moves on the English part. The English had lost all respect
for the French men-at-arms. But, Valmont had come close to being a
major disaster and Bauge was to raise the morale of the French as it
showed that the English were not invincible. Bauge caused Henry to
return to France for what turned out to be his final campaign.

The French showed, at Agincourt, that they were slow learners. Agincourt
was the third time that they had been beaten by the English defensive
tactics. At Crecy, the English beat off French cavalry attacks. Seeing
that the English won their victory by fighting on foot, they dismounted
to fight the Black Prince at Poitieres. All this did was give the English
archers more time to shoot at them. Charles V and his Marshall, Bertrand
duGuesclin, developed the most effective strategy to use against
the English. The strategy was for the French to avoid the English army.
From 1369-96, duGuesclin reconquered much of the territory that had
been siezed by Edward III. In this 27 year period, no major battles were
fought. duGuesclin, after learning where the English were, went in a
different direction and captured towns. Perhaps the reason why
duGuesclin was able to avoid battle was because he was a commoner.
France’s knightly marshalls, brought up with the ideal of Chivalry, were
to fight time after time and get defeated time after time.

After Agincourt, the next major battle (Bauge and Valmont cannot be
considered major battles) was to occur after Henry’s death in 1422.
While Henry was alive the Dauphin would not risk a battle. In 1423, The
Dauphin finally allowed his commanders to start a offensive with a
combined French-Scottish army of 15,000 men. In June they besieged
the town of Cravant. A joint English-Burgundian army marched to the
town’s relief. The French, showing that they might have learned something
from the English, formed a strong defensive position. But, the
English, led by the Earl of Salisbury, out-flanked the French position
and in a day long fight, the French were routed. The French lost over
7,000 killed or captured.13

An even more important battle was fought in August, 1424. The Battle
of Verneuil, often called a second Agincourt, proved that the French
still had not learned its lesson. In July, 1424, John, Duke of Bedford,
brother of Henry V and now Regent, in France, for the young Henry VI,
marched into Dauphinist territory with an English army of 9,000 men.
They were met near the town of Verneuil by a combined French-
Scottish army of 17,000 men. Apparently some of the older French
commanders did not want to offer battle to the English. They preferred
duGuesclin’s strategy and wanted to raid Normandy as Bedford had to
strip the English garrisons in order to form his army. But, the younger
French nobles and the Scots, who had not been at Agincourt, wanted to
do battle and their view prevailed.

Bedford was to prove, in this battle, that he was just as good a general
as his older brother. He formed the English up in its traditional formation
of archers and men-at-arms. The only difference was that Bedford
deployed 2,000 archers as a reserve because he was not able to secure
his flanks. The French formed two battles, side by side, the left battle
consisted of 9,000 French, the right battle contained 6,000 Scots. Six
hundred cavalry were deployed on each flank.

The battle was initiated, as at Agincourt, with the English advancing
to within bowshot of the French. The French responded with a general
advance. But, from here things begin to differ from Agincourt. The field
at Agincourt had been muddy and this slowed down the French advance.
But, at Verneuil the field was dry and hard.

The cavalry on the English right reached the archers before they
could finish setting up their stakes. The archers broke and the cavalry
began to roll up the English flank. The English reserve was able to rally
the retreating archers and the English counterattack broke the French
battle, which retreated to Verneuil, with the English in pursuit,

Meanwhile, the English left was hotly engaged with the Scottish battle.
The cavalry on this flank took advantage of this, and of the open
terrain, to avoid the English archers and they looted the English camp.
The English reserve, after dealing with the cavalry on the right, drove off
the French cavalry on the left. They then wheeled to the right and
charged the exposed Scottish right. To make matters worse for the
Scots, the men-at-arms from the English right, leaving the archers to
pursue the retreating French, hit the Scots in the rear. No quarter was
asked or given and the entire Scottish battle was destroyed.14 The
French-Scottish army lost 7,000 men and the English lost 1,000 men.

Verneuil was the last great victory for the English in the Hundred
Years War, Five years latter, Joan of Arc rallied the French and in the
1430’s a new French army appeared. The French finally learned the
lesson of Agincourt and a professional standing army, under direct control
of the King and independent of the nobility, was developed by such
great French soldier-statesmen as John Couer and Jean Bureau. The
bankrupt English Crown was unable to stop the new French army and
by 1453, all of France, except Calais, was once again in French hands.

By 1453, the situation in France and England was just the opposite of
the situation in 1415. Now England had a weak king and was being torn
apart by civil war. France now had a strong monarchy and the strongest
army in Europe. England was to recover from its civil war when the
vigorous House of Tudor took the throne. England, turning away from
dreams of a continental empire, was able to start an oversea empire that
would make England great. France, under the leadership of Charles VII
and his son Louis XI, was to become for the next hundred years the
dominant country in Europe. These, then, were the long term effects of
Agincourt.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Burne, Alfred H., The Agincourt War, Essential Books, Inc., Fair Lawn,
New Jersey, 1956.

Hutchison, Harold F., King Henry V, John Day Co., New York, 1967.

Newhall, Richard A., The English Conquest Of Normandy, 1416-1424,
Russell & Russell, New York, 1924.

Wylie, James H. and Waugh, William, The Reign Of Henry The Fifth,
Greenwood Press, New York, 1968, vol. III.

Vale, M.G.A., Charles VII, Eyre Methuen, London, 1974.

NOTES
1 Bume, p 87
2 Hutchison, p 55
3 Burne, p 88
4 Hutchison, p 134
5 Hutchison, pp 113-114
6 Hutchison, pp 104-109
7 Wylie, p 19
8 Hutchison, p 101
9 Hutchison, p 165
10 Wylie, pp 204-205
11 Burne, pp 99-103
12 Newhall, pp 275-276
13 Burne, pp 189-190
14 Burne, pp 204-209