On a field near what is now Azincourt, in northern France, the English army under the personal command of King Henry V stood in line of battle facing their French enemies.

On a field near what is now Azincourt, in northern France, the English army under the personal command of King Henry V stood in line of battle facing their French enemies. After the armies stared each other down for a couple of hours, Henry surprised the French by ordering his heavily outnumbered men to advance.

The flower of French nobility was on the field that day, mostly knights in the cavalry. Seeing the impetuous English advance, the French cavalry charged. What followed was the Battle of Agincourt, one of the most pivotal battles in world history.

Of the approximately 7,500 English troops on the field at Agincourt, over 6,000 of them were archers—men of the English and Welsh middling classes who had been raised to the longbow. An expert archer could fire as many as ten arrows a minute. As the French cavalry galloped toward the English lines atop their armored warhorses, they were met with a lethal rain of English arrows. In some cases, the arrows pierced the French armor. In others, they struck the unprotected portions of the riders. More often, they wounded the horses, sending them into stampeding panics and tossing their riders to the ground. Within a matter of minutes, the vaunted French cavalry was decimated.

Coming behind them were three lines of French infantry. Weighed down by their armor, slogging slowly across the mud-churned field, having to step over dead and wounded horses and knights, all the while being bombarded with English arrows, by the time the infantry got within fighting range they were exhausted. Led by King Henry personally, the English fell upon them and cut them to pieces, the archers tossing aside their bows and attacking with axes, mallets, and swords.

At a cost of perhaps as few as 200 men, the English killed over 6,000 of the French that day, nearly all of them nobility. Barons, dukes, counts, lords, an archbishop, and thousands of titled knights lay dead on the field, ending the male lines in several entire French noble families. Henry marched his army to the coast and returned to England for a hero’s welcome.

The Battle of Agincourt did not end the Hundred Years War. It would continue for over 30 more years. But it did significantly weaken France. And it signaled the coming end of the age of chivalry, when battles were decided by knights on horseback in combat with their social peers.

The Battle of Agincourt occurred on October 25, 1415, six hundred eight years ago today. In the words of Shakespeare, “This story shall the good man teach his son.”

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