"Henry V's Greatest Victory Is Beseiged by Academia"

[saskganesh]

... one of the most understudied aspects of Agincourt was that because of the dysentery, the longbowmen fought without pants. and there was shit everywhere.

[Razgovory]

... one of the most understudied aspects of Agincourt was that because of the dysentery, the longbowmen fought without pants. and there was shit everywhere.

This is probably what led the French to a false sense of superiority.  They saw the English shitting themselves and thought it was because of them.

[DisturbedPervert]

... one of the most understudied aspects of Agincourt was that because of the dysentery, the longbowmen fought without pants. and there was shit everywhere.

Too bad they didn't have kilts

[Malthus]

From what I've read, of prime strategic importance at Agincourt was - mud.

The mud (caused by nasty wet weather) badly hampered the French knight's mobility.

While it is true that riding in full armour, or even walking about, is not as difficult as some believe - the weight is reasonably well distributed and some athletes can even do hand-stands wearing it - heavy armour combined with thick mud makes for poor mobility; and it was fatally easy, once tired by the trudge to the front, to be knocked over.

As in many medieval battles, what was really fatal was to get too crowded together to effectivel wield one's weapons. If that happens, and panic sets in, having large numbers won't help any more than having large numbers of soccer fans makes a stadium disaster better. Apparently, the attack of the archers - lightly armoured and so more manuverable in the mud - on the flanks of the french attack, knocking over knights in the slippery mud with mallets & stabbing 'em through their visors as they sprawled on the ground, had the effect of crowding the main attack together into a more or less helpless mass. They could not smash their way through the English men at arms to their front because the ones in front could not effectively fight due to the pressure from in back - -  the English were not as tired from tramping to the front, did not have bodies underfoot to deal with, and had room to swing their weapons.

Once this set in, more reinforcements just made the problem worse as they crowded and pushed forward.

Some such as Keegan suggest that part of the reason for the disaster was that the French simply did not wish to fight archers, who were not their social equals. I suspect that they were simply fixated on moving to their front. They mostly had visors down because of the lingering threat of arrows, and so their vision would be pretty limited anyway, which may have had something to do with it. 

[Josquius]

Armour or no attacking through thick mud is always going to be a hell of a lot harder than just having to stand and defend your position.


Is this true on the pantsless archers?
I've never heard that before...sounds cool though.

[Razgovory]

Armour or no attacking through thick mud is always going to be a hell of a lot harder than just having to stand and defend your position.


Is this true on the pantsless archers?
I've never heard that before...sounds cool though.

Yeah, it's true.  I've heard of it.

[saskganesh]

in many other battles, nobles had no compunctions about slaughtering their social lessers. this is one of the fundamentals of feudalism after all so I really doubt that's a factor.

[grumbler]

It was French territory, and.France's population was 5-10 times that of England. Rather easy to raise men, especially for short campaigns.

Say what?  Even if it were sensible to talk about "France" in this period, this is way too extreme.  What is now modern France probably had a population of around 20 million at the start of this period, and England+Wales maybe 1/3 that.  Only about half of Modern France was under the control of the Valois at the start of the war.  By the end of the war both countries were probably only 70-80% of their pre-war populations, due to the war, famine, and disease (they would not regain their 1300 populations until the 1700s).

You may be able to argue that the Kings of France had ready cash reserves 5-10 times that of England.  The accounts of the war are full of stories about the English kings being desperate for coin.

[Malthus]

in many other battles, nobles had no compunctions about slaughtering their social lessers. this is one of the fundamentals of feudalism after all so I really doubt that's a factor.

Yeah, my suspicion is that if someone is coming to kill you, you are likely to deal with him first and ask his pedigree later. 

My theory is that the knights simply were not aware of the flank attacks until it was too late. Battle is a confusing thing and visibilty pretty limited, they probably mostly only were aware of what was immediately in front of them.

[Malthus]

Armour or no attacking through thick mud is always going to be a hell of a lot harder than just having to stand and defend your position.


Is this true on the pantsless archers?
I've never heard that before...sounds cool though.

Well, certainly; but by all acounts the English archers counter-attacked on the flanks. The fact that they were more lightly armoured probably made that easier to do. 

[grumbler]

Yeah, my suspicion is that if someone is coming to kill you, you are likely to deal with him first and ask his pedigree later. 

My theory is that the knights simply were not aware of the flank attacks until it was too late. Battle is a confusing thing and visibilty pretty limited, they probably mostly only were aware of what was immediately in front of them.

Also agree, and agree with your earlier comment about the limited visibility being due, in part, to the visors being closed for fear of arrow-fire.  It would be interesting to go back and see if the main contribution of the arrow-fire was the casualties inflicted or the cohesion loss inflicted.

[Malthus]

Yeah, my suspicion is that if someone is coming to kill you, you are likely to deal with him first and ask his pedigree later. 

My theory is that the knights simply were not aware of the flank attacks until it was too late. Battle is a confusing thing and visibilty pretty limited, they probably mostly only were aware of what was immediately in front of them.

Also agree, and agree with your earlier comment about the limited visibility being due, in part, to the visors being closed for fear of arrow-fire.  It would be interesting to go back and see if the main contribution of the arrow-fire was the casualties inflicted or the cohesion loss inflicted.

My vote is for the latter. From what I've read, the archers fired off all of their arrows and the french still came on, in spite of taking reasonably heavy casualties, in numbers much greater than the English defenders. It was only when the archers threw down their bows, picked up their mallets and swarmed out from behind their stakes and started smashing into the french flanks that the battle turned into a massacre.

The French certainly should have prevented that by directing attacks on the flanks as well as the front. But is seems by that time the french leaders had seemingly lost any ability to control the battle.

The trick seems to have been that once the knights are herded or crowded together, only the ones on the outside edge of the crowd can fight. If this happens, to a point it effectively doesn't matter how many of them there are - more and more knights crowding in behind just make the problem worse.

[saskganesh]

It was French territory, and.France's population was 5-10 times that of England. Rather easy to raise men, especially for short campaigns.

Say what?  Even if it were sensible to talk about "France" in this period, this is way too extreme.  What is now modern France probably had a population of around 20 million at the start of this period, and England+Wales maybe 1/3 that.  Only about half of Modern France was under the control of the Valois at the start of the war.  By the end of the war both countries were probably only 70-80% of their pre-war populations, due to the war, famine, and disease (they would not regain their 1300 populations until the 1700s).

You may be able to argue that the Kings of France had ready cash reserves 5-10 times that of England.  The accounts of the war are full of stories about the English kings being desperate for coin.

est stats I have read are that England's pop in the 15th century was about 3 million, down form six pre Black Plague.

OK you are right about France. I checked some. tho it was more heavily populated, it's likely under 20 million. not sure if those pre or post Plague.

[Malthus]

Say what?  Even if it were sensible to talk about "France" in this period, this is way too extreme.  What is now modern France probably had a population of around 20 million at the start of this period, and England+Wales maybe 1/3 that.  Only about half of Modern France was under the control of the Valois at the start of the war.  By the end of the war both countries were probably only 70-80% of their pre-war populations, due to the war, famine, and disease (they would not regain their 1300 populations until the 1700s).

You may be able to argue that the Kings of France had ready cash reserves 5-10 times that of England.  The accounts of the war are full of stories about the English kings being desperate for coin.

"France" was certainly thought to be much richer and more populous (though as far as I know, there is no way of quantifying that). But as you know, it was famously riven by divisions; at one point or another, much of it fought for the English. 

I read somewhere that Frances I of France was once shown the remains of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, and a monk opening the tomb pointed to the pole-axe scar in the skull from his assasination and said "...that's the hole through which the English entered France ...".

[Razgovory]

You may be able to argue that the Kings of France had ready cash reserves 5-10 times that of England.  The accounts of the war are full of stories about the English kings being desperate for coin.

I'm not sure you could even argue that.  The Kings of England was always begging parliament for more cash, but he may not have been that much poorer then the King of France.  The France was much wealthier then England but the King couldn't direct most of those resources due to poor government and civil wars.  The middle class uprisings, wandering bands of mercenaries and the English armies burning and looting across France probably didn't help his fiances.

Also it was probably more expensive for the English to operate since they had to cross a sea to get to France and I think their army was closer to a professional force of paid soldiers as oppose to the more feudal French military.  A french army could probably be raised fairly quickly by ordering up all the local knights and other feudal warriors.  While each would be a very skilled warrior they may be unused to fighting together and might not be as good soldiers.   Though I'm not sure on this.