But eight decades before Columbus and Cabot sailed to the Americas, the victory at Agincourt established an earlier, English, empire. The high point of the Hundred Years War, from the English perspective at least, it brought about the Treaty of Troyes, which settled the claims of the previous century and granted France’s throne to Henry’s heirs. The battle itself still captivates. Four eyewitnesses wrote accounts, agreeing in the major details and leaving historians little doubt as to what took place.
Today [October 25] in 1415 on this, St. Crispin’s Day, King Henry V triumphed at Agincourt. The battle is one of the defining moments in the history of the English-speaking peoples. It is a victory like unto Marathon or Arbela; or for Christians, and certainly for the devout King Henry, a post canonical deliverance comparable to the victory of Gideon, or to the parting of the Red Sea.
Historians speak of the First British Empire, which began in Jamestown and ended at Yorktown, and of the Second British Empire, of which India became the keystone and which died very quickly once its heart was removed.
But eight decades before Columbus and Cabot sailed to the Americas, the victory at Agincourt established an earlier, English, empire. The high point of the Hundred Years War, from the English perspective at least, it brought about the Treaty of Troyes, which settled the claims of the previous century and granted France’s throne to Henry’s heirs.
The battle itself still captivates. Four eyewitnesses wrote accounts, agreeing in the major details and leaving historians little doubt as to what took place.
Though successful, the siege of Harfleur – then the principal port city of France – had taken longer and cost more than hoped (“Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead!”). His numbers diminished to barely 6,000, many of his men sick with dysentery, Henry decided to retire to Calais and thence to England.
The French, led by an insane king and an arrogant, wicked court, had failed to assemble their forces in time to relieve Harfleur, but now stood astride Henry’s rain-soaked path. They outnumbered his single line of men-at-arms plus archers by about five to one, including cavalry the English lacked. They wanted vengeance. And they offered him two choices: give himself up as a captive for ransom, or face certain annihilation.
It is Shakespeare, of course, who has shaped our memory of these events, but his account is faithful enough. In the words of Plantagenet scholar Dan Jones, “if we read the letters the real Henry dictated,,,there is a stridency and grandeur to his tone that is unmatched in dictations by any of his other aristocratic captains. Shakespeare’s grown-up Hal thunders true to the spirit, if not the letter, of his real-life counterpart.”
We remember Henry’s response to the French herald Montjoy: “If we may pass, we will. If we be hindered, we shall your tawny ground with your red blood discolor . . . The sum of all our answer is but this: We would not seek a battle, as we are. Nor as we are, we say we will not shun it.” One can hear this echo, 525 years later and one month to the day after the French abandoned Paris to the Nazis, in Churchill: “We shall defend every village, every town and every city. The vast mass of London itself, fought street by street, could easily devour an entire hostile army; and we would rather see London laid in ruins and ashes than that it should be tamely and abjectly enslaved.”
In a rather striking departure from medieval norms but consistent with his Christian character, Henry had prohibited his men from looting, and had even executed a friend for having done so (“In our marches through the country, there [must] be nothing compelled from the villages, nothing taken but paid for, none of the French upbraided or abused in disdainful language”). But by the time of Henry’s answer to Montjoy, the English army had marched 200 muddy miles on increasingly empty stomachs. They were exhausted. And they were certain of defeat by the well-rested, well-fed, well-armed French.
St. Crispin’s Day Speech:
From Henry V (1599) by William Shakespeare
WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!
KING. What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.