The
Agincourt Executions:
Verdicts
in the Courts of Chivalry and History
“Agincourt,
Agincourt!
Know
ye not Agincourt?
Where English slue and hurt
All their French foemen?
With our pikes and bills brown,
How the French were beat downe,
Shot by our bowman.”
The Laws of
Chivalry are just as complex as any set of laws today. There were books of law, debates on fine
points, and even higher “courts” which would decide on finer matters or dictate
the full suspension of such laws. This complexity, while fascinating, causes
troubles when attempts are made to fully understand both motivations and
ramifications of actions during the later Medieval period.
This inability to
fully understand the “chivalrous mind” is not a recent occurrence however. As shall be evidenced in the following paper,
historians and chroniclers before them have questioned the suitability of the actions
of armies and individuals since the actual events occurred, much less several
centuries later. Events which were
recorded in one way have become over the years re-interpreted, perhaps reflecting
the changing values of the time or more likely the changing collective image of
the Medieval period at large. This is to
speak nothing of the cultural perspective of the historian or chronicler which
must be taken into account. This paper
deals with a perfect example of this change over time and perspective.
During the series
of battles, skirmishes, and uneasy peaces that have become known as the Hundred
Years War, there was one battle which has been recognized as one of the most
significant English victories in history.
On October 25th, 1415, King Henry V of England led his vastly
outnumbered army consisting predominantly of archers against the superior
forces of France on a field between the small French towns of Tramcourt and
Agincourt. The story of the English
victory at Agincourt is one which is so famous as to have become popular
knowledge. There are key pieces of
information however which must be mentioned, so a small recitation of the
relevant facts is in order.
THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT
In the early
autumn of 1415, the English had recently taken the town of Harfleur in a
month-long siege. While few casualties
occurred, the English forces had still been heavily reduced due to the ravages
of dysentery, and a garrison force still had to be left to hold Harfleur, reducing the English numbers even further. According to the Chronicle of London,
on October 8th, King Henry departed Harfleur
on his way to Calais with 6,000 troops, only 1/6th of which were
men-at-arms, the rest being archers.
After fifteen days marching with only a single day of rest, the army
arrived at the “River of Swords” (River Ternoise) when they received word that
the French army was just on the other side of the river. After crossing, Henry joined his scouts on
the top of a nearby hill and for the first time witnessed the massive army they
would be facing, estimated at between 20,000 and 24,000 men, all pulled up in
battle formation (recent evidence suggests that this was not a chance meeting
as previously thought, but instead the French were intimately aware of Henry’s
position since he left Harfleur). Henry ordered his own troops to form ranks,
whereupon a knight remarked to Henry that he wished he had 10,000 more archers
to which Henry was famously alleged to have replied:
That is a foolish way to talk . . . because, by the God in Heaven
upon Whose grace I have relied and in Whom is my firm hope of victory, I would
not, even if I could, have a single man more than I do. For these I have here with me are God’s
people, whom He deigns to let me have at this time. Do you not believe . . . that the Almighty,
with these His humble few, is able to overcome the opposing arrogance of the
French who boast of their great number and their own strength?
Before Henry could prove his point however, the host of French broke
ranks and bivouacked nearby. Henry
withdrew himself to a nearby hamlet where he proceeded to send “representatives
to [the French commanders] . . . to offer them reparation for all the damage
which they had caused and the restitution of all that they had taken on
condition that they would agree to let them return freely to their own country,”
all of which were rejected out of hand by the French nobility. Henry, having made an effort to prevent the
inevitable slaughter of his troops at the hands of the French, rose the next
morning and put on what was reported to be an extremely confident façade,
haranguing his troops with declarations of confidence in God’s favour being
with the English.
Accounts vary, but it seems that Henry gathered his troops in the
southern end of the field and arranged them into three groups, with archers and
men-at-arms interspersed in each. There
were little or no troops left to guard the baggage and none left in
reserve. On the northern end, the French
has arranged themselves in three main ranks, filling the width of the field
entirely. It had rained the night
before, and the centre of the field was extremely muddy. After a game of waiting, Henry ordered his
troops forward until they came into bowshot range of the French troops. At this point, wooden stakes, either
sharpened or capped in iron spikes at both ends were placed, and the archers
began strafing the French. “Our archers
shot no arrows off target; all caused death and brought to the ground both men
and horses . . . Our stakes made them fall over, each on top of the other so
that they lay in heaps two spear’s length in height.” Even allowing for the inevitable
over-exaggerations, this comment seems relatively likely. 5,000 archers firing into a mass of 24,000
men and horses are quite likely to find targets easier to hit than miss. The stakes were equally successful in keeping
the French army from making any sort of effective charge via horseback or on
foot. Additionally, the cavalry was
rendered completely impotent by the sucking mud which had been churned up by
both armies, the result being that the French had no recourse to an effective
offence whatsoever.
Over the space of three hours, the inevitable defeat of the English
had turned into a complete rout of the French forces. Thousands of French were killed in the first,
and the rest either retreated or surrendered to the English. These men were then taken as prisoners of
war, surrendering a gauntlet and their helmet as surety of payment of ransom. Thus is the moral and chivalric question of
the Battle of Agincourt. After these men
had surrendered, there came a rallying of those French troops which had
retreated while at the same time the baggage train, which had been left
undefended, was attacked. Unable to both
guard prisoners and defend against fresh attacks from two directions, King
Henry gave the shocking order via battle horn to execute those taken as
prisoner. A great cry of dismay was
taken up by both the English soldiers and their French prisoners. Some sources report that the English men-at-arms
refused to follow the order and that an esquire had to be detailed a group of
archers to carry out the executions personally.
Eventually however the order was carried out, and the English began
executing the surrendered French prisoners.
It is believed that such executions were likely easily accomplished, as
the French had already been disarmed and part of their armour had been removed. Before long, the approaching French withdrew
again (if they had ever attacked in the first place) and the executions ceased,
but not before several hundred men had been “murdered.”
A CASE OF CHIVALRIC LAW
In L’Arbre des Batailles
(“The Tree of Battles”), Honore Bonet’s study
of chivalry which takes the form of a series of questions and answers on
difficult intricacies on the subject of chivalry, Chapter XLVI deals with the treatment
of prisoners and is quite simple. To
paraphrase: Should a man kill another
man on the field of battle; that is simply the way of war. However, once the other man has been taken
into custody (“led . . . to his house”),
it becomes murder if he is killed in anything but self-defence. It is that attitude which a number of
chroniclers and historians adopted when dealing with the actions of the English,
dismissing entirely in the process the second half of the chapter wherein Bonet
goes on to say that it is within the jurisdiction of the “sovereign prince who
is carrying on the war” to choose to execute the prisoner should there be “a
risk of his escaping, with the result of prolonged war, damage, or mischief.” It is therefore obvious that the contemporary
voice on the subject of correct chivalric behaviour supported the actions of
King Henry. That is not to say that the
annals of history were so accepting, however.
Indeed, the popular opinion of Henry’s actions varied greatly depending
on who was writing about him and when.
Before
examining the recorders of the Battle of Agincourt, it would be appropriate to
note that Bonet’s very next chapter deals with
another subject of interest to the incident at Agincourt. The payment of ransom seems an unchivalric course for a knight to the modern mind and
there were questions as to its legitimacy in the Medieval period as well. Entitled “Whether ransom of Silver or Gold
may Justly be Demanded of a Prisoner,” Chapter XLVII of The Tree of Battles details the logical reasoning behind the
allowing of ransom demands (in short, the captor has the right to all the
prisoner’s possessions, thus as long as he is not bankrupted -- an unchivalrous act itself -- the prisoner may be legitimately
exhorted for money). Legal reasoning aside, the ransoming of
prisoners was an inescapable facet of warfare.
The captains of the Great Companies earned much of their famed wealth
through the ransoming of prisoners, and it was commonly thought that it was only
through battle and its accompanying looting that a man could advance himself in
the world beyond his born station. Thus
when Henry’s command for the execution of the prisoners was announced, it meant
that the main source of profit for the men-at-arms and archers was being
destroyed as well.
The varying
opinions and portrayals of the execution of prisoners that occurred at
Agincourt are a fascinating subject and one deserving of closer study. Luckily there are any number of sources which
are readily available which, when viewed as a body, give significant insight
into the changing attitudes over time. The discoveries which are made when such a
comparison is carried out might perhaps be startling. An examination which covers both
chronological progression and cultural origin seems the most appropriate; and
in such an examination, it will be illustrated that the logical progressional assumptions -- that the farther from the
event the less outrage would be shown, and further that the English would be more
inclined towards forgiveness than their French counterparts -- are in fact diametrically
false.
ENGLISH
CHRONICLERS AND HISTORIANS
Written only
two years after the Battle of Agincourt, the Gesti Henrici Quinti
was a blatant piece of propaganda designed to make Henry V look “as a devoutly
Christian prince who, with his people, enjoyed God’s constant approval and the
support of Him and His Saints, notably the Blessed Virgin and St. George.” Despite the obvious bias on the part of the
nameless author, the Gesti
still contains one of the most accurate descriptions of the Battle known, and
is the source most often copied from in later texts. In discussing the execution of prisoners,
mention of Henry’s part in the action is suspiciously absent. Instead, it says only that “the prisoners, save
for the dukes of Orleans and Bourbon, . . . and a very few others, were killed
by the swords either of their captors or of others following after, lest they
should involve us in utter disaster in the fighting that would ensue.” Thus, by omission, Henry is completely free
of explicit blame for the action.
Indeed, the author was even successful in making the executions sound
completely necessary for the preservation of victory (handily fulfilling one of
the requirements for a just execution of a prisoner, according to Bonet).
This may be
sharply contrasted with a recent twentieth century account of the execution
wherein the author, John Keegan, describes Henry’s decision to order the
executions as “notorious.” In Keegan’s
portrayal, the attack on the English baggage was only a few looters from nearby
Agincourt, and the order to execute the surrendered French was not only wrong
but immoral and even illegal. According
to Keegan, Henry’s troops refused to execute their prisoners, not for the financial
reasons mentioned above, but instead because they held themselves to a higher
moral code. Henry eventually had to
order low-born archers to do the
bloody deed under the command of an esquire.
Further, after
painting a hauntingly evocative picture of the sorry state of the English
soldiers who had been involved in the battle, Keegan declares Henry’s order to
be “comprehensible” but “Comprehensible in harsh tactical logic; in ethical,
human and practical terms much more difficult to understand.” While this is a bold statement which,
according to modern sensibilities, is entirely correct, it still makes use of
bad history. First among its faults is
an overabundance of detail. Not because
it is distracting, but because such a level of detail does not exist in the
historical record. The writer of the Gesti, for
example, was almost certainly at the battlefield but does not give such details
as the method by which the looters “reaped the rewards of the fight” while “the
main bodies of men-at-arms stood their ground.” Further, Keegan descended deep into moral
judgement which, as a historian, he should have avoided. To wax judgemental for almost two pages on
the nature of Henry’s “treachery” and the contrasting nobility of the rest of
the army for refusing to follow his command reduces the credibility of the
author to almost nothing. While these
are mistakes of a historiographical nature, they are
still glaring errors which suggest a considerable bias on Keegan’s part against
Henry and add to the growing picture of the spectrum of opinion regarding the
Battle and its events.
John Keegan
and the anonymous author of the Gesti were the two extremes between which laid most of the
rest of those English and, later, American historians who addressed the
execution of the prisoners during the Battle of Agincourt. Some were just as forgiving of Henry as the Gesti was and
kept him entirely from the narrative. Another fifteenth century chronicler
said: “They killed them, they captured
them, and keep them for ransoming but quickly there was a shout that a new
battle would begin . . . The English killed the French they had taken prisoner
for the sake of protecting their rear.” A few lauded Henry for his brilliance as a
leader as in this sixteenth century excerpt: “The prudent king of England
seeing the reassemble of his adversaries sent his heralds unto them . . . [to
say that] if they delayed to depart . . . those of their company already taken
prisoners . . . without mercy or redemption should be put to death”
(note the omission of Henry’s actual order that the prisoners be put to
death). Some deplored the act and
condemned the actions with strong imagery.
Another sixteenth century history gloomily described the act: “When this dolorous decree and pitiful
proclamation was pronounced, pity it was to see and loathsome it was to behold
how some Frenchmen were suddenly sticked with
daggers, some were brained with poleaxes, some were slain with mails, other had
their throats cut and some their bellies paunched: so
that in effect having respect to the great number, few prisoners or none were
saved.” In fact the previous entry’s imagery was so
compelling that it was copied at least one other time almost verbatim in Holinshed’s Chronicles.
It can be
seen that as time progressed, relations of the battle more often included
Henry’s direct involvement in the choice to execute the prisoners. This could be down to several factors, but
two are the most likely and are not mutually exclusive. The more obvious is that the further away
from the harsh realities of a long and drawn out war -- seventy-eight of the
one-hundred-sixteen years that comprise the Hundred Years War had already
passed when the Battle of Agincourt took place -- the harder it became for the
chroniclers and historians to fully understand the motivations and mind-sets of
the players involved which may have made the perceived necessity of the
execution more palatable to the King and common foot solider alike. Equally as likely is the fact that as time
progressed the less historians had to favour the image of Henry V and his
actions. It is entirely possible that
had the patronage of the King been less important to the author of the Gesti, the author
might have indicted Henry’s actions much more strongly. It should be noted however that Henry
continued to be reported as a generally honourable man and a great military
leader even while his actions at Agincourt were being lambasted.
FRENCH
CHRONICLERS
Most of the French
historians who dealt with the execution did so in the fifteenth century, and with
almost a sense of embarrassment and with very little perceived ire towards
Henry V. Le Religieux (“The Monk”) de
Saint-Denis wrote between 1415 and 1422 and said very succinctly “The king of
England believed that [the French] were intending to return to the charge and
so ordered that all the prisoners should be killed,” though according to him,
the French never attempted to return to battle but instead were trying to
withdraw but had gotten separated from the main body of the army -- an even
more ignominious end for the prisoners for their deaths were not only in vain,
but were also the fault of their brethren who were retreating poorly. This was not the only time in which the
French army was blamed for the massacre, in fact. In the 1430s, Pierre de Fenin
wrote in his Memoires
that “[two French nobles] accompanied by some men of low rank launched an
attack on the baggage of the English making great affray . . . Thus the English
killed many of the prisoners they had.
[The nobles] were later much blamed for this and also they were punished
by Duke John of Burgundy.” The lowborn nature of the nobles’ companions
here emphasizes the unwise nature of their decision to antagonize the English
army. The punishment for the nobles went
unexplained previously, but in Monstrelet’s chronicle,
it is discovered that the two nobles, “Robinet de Bournouville and Isembard d’Azincourt were later arrested and imprisoned for a long
duration . . . even though they had given to . . . [the Duke’s] son . . .
[booty] which had belonged to the king of England and had been found by them
along with his other baggage.” Though the attack on the baggage was ill-advised,
another French chronicler wrote that “After the defeat there came a rumour that
the duke of Brittany was coming with a large company. As a result, the French rallied, which was a
bad thing, for most of the English killed their prisoners.” In that case neither King Henry nor the
nobles who attacked the baggage train got even the slightest mention. Any blame which could be placed was done so
upon those who rallied and attacked from the front.
It may seem
odd that later French chronicles and histories for the most part do not mention
the execution of prisoners, or if they do only as an irrelevant footnote. Like the ever-increasingly hostile attitude
towards King Henry V on the part of the English-speaking historian, the causes
can only be surmised upon. It seems most
likely that the Battle of Agincourt as a whole rested within the proverbial
category of “better left forgotten” in the French mind. After all, the French eventually won the
Hundred Years War and had their own heroes and victories to laud. It is easy to imagine that the entire
embarrassing defeat and subsequent slaughter was too humiliating to continually
contemplate. Perhaps an even more vital
and compelling question is why the French took upon themselves the role of
scapegoat for the actions of the English?
This is a question even more difficult to answer, though a possible
supposition is that the chroniclers may have thought that the slaughter was
more palatable if it was caused by a mistake of their own, rather than having
to admit that they were truly at the mercy of the English. However considering that both of the more
famous contemporary books on chivalry were written by the French, it is even
possible that the French truly saw it as a matter of chivalric duty to take
upon themselves the blame for an incident whose blame can never truly be
attributed.
THE BATTLE OF
VERNEUIL
Though the
Battle of Agincourt has become the single most written-of encounter of the
Hundred Years War -- to the point that an alternate name to the entire second
half of the war is “The Agincourt War” -- it
still was not entirely unique to the English campaign. Similar tactics were used at least one other
time by a similar commander, who was similarly outnumbered, with a similar
outcome -- right down to a possible case of wholesale slaughter.
The Battle of
Verneuil which was fought nine years after Agincourt fifty miles outside of
Paris held considerable similarities with the Battle of Agincourt. It was Henry V’s brother, the Duke of Bedford
who led an outnumbered army of Englishmen against a Franco-Scottish enemy. The numbers were not nearly as dire as at
Agincourt, with the English army estimated at 10,000 and the Franco-Scots at a
strength of approximately 15,000. A very
similar battle ensued, wherein the English advanced upon the French and Scots
before placing their stakes and firing upon their enemy. The opposing army managed to affect a charge
of cavalry before the stakes were completely buried (the land was hard baked in
the heat of summer rather than muddy from rains the night before), creating chaos
along one flank of the English army though not enough to significantly change
the outcome of the day. The rest of the
battle continued more or less as could be expected with Agincourt as the
blueprint, though with one prime difference.
At no time did the English take a single Scot prisoner. They were instead slaughtered to a man.
While the
mass slaughter may seem to be another in a long list of atrocities performed
upon the Scottish by the English (or so an Anglophobe might claim), it was in
fact the Scots who first declared that it would be a battle wherein no quarter
would be sought or given. There were
perhaps several reasons for this dramatic declaration. First was that the Scots army had arrived
months before but had been forced to wait for four months in Tours, so they
were by all accounts exceedingly eager to meet their traditional enemies. A second factor which might explain the
English willingness to so thoroughly destroy the Scots may be found again in a
collection of ordinances put into effect by Henry V in the summer of 1419. Among provisions for the making of “Rodes”
and injunctions against the looting of churches there is an ordinance “For
theim that taketh Traytours and put theim to Raunsom”:
Also if any
man take any enemye the whiche hathe ben shorne and had billet, or any man the
whiche outhe ligeaunce unto our liege lord the Kinge, that is to witt,
Englishe, Welsshe, Irishe, or any other, that as sone as he is comen in to the
oste or elswher that he be brought into the warde of Counstable and Marishall
upon payne to have the same death that the saide traytour or enemy sholde have
. . .
Alexander
Douglas had broken an agreement with Henry V to join forces with him upon the
restoration of King James to Scotland. As such, Douglas and all of his accompanying
Scots were guilty of treason. Had the
Scots been captured by the English, they would have been put to death. In fact, had the English tried to capture
them for any reason other than to put them on trial for treason (ie; for
ransom, being the whole reason that prisoners were taken in the first place),
then they too would have been put to death.
Whatever the
reason, the Scottish resolution to ask for no quarter was upheld, and common
belief is that the Scots, who were largely abandoned during a French retreat,
were eventually slaughtered to a man.
This crushing defeat effectively removed Scotland from the remaining of
the Hundred Years War, as no further mention of any sort of considerable
Scottish force is made.
While a good
deal bloodier in terms of numbers killed (the Scottish forces consisted of up
to 6,500 men), the slaughter of the Scots was apparently far more palatable to
the chroniclers of the time. The Brut makes hardly a mention of, and
passes no judgement on, the destruction of the Scottish forces, but instead
makes an observation that the execution (by hanging, drawing, and quartering)
of a French commander for leading 500 troops off the field was “quite right.”
CONCLUSION
War between
England and France was not a new thing, even when the Hundred Years War started
in 1337. Only thirteen years previously,
the English had lost the short War of Saint-Sardos to
France, losing with it the last of their French lands apart from Bordeaux and a
narrow strip of coast. Despite this
familiarity with the state of war, it is doubtful that either country was truly
prepared for the sustained hostility which would last for over a century. When the Battle of Agincourt came about, 78
years of on-and-off warfare had already occurred. Not only had each of the soldiers present at
Agincourt grown up with the Anglo-French Wars a reality, but their fathers, and
in some cases their grandfathers had as well.
On each side were men who were professional soldiers who had literally
never known anything other than warfare.
Looking at
the copious accounts of the events which occurred on St. Crispin’s Day in 1415,
there is no way to tell for certain what happened between the French and
English forces. It is unclear if King
Henry himself gave the order for the prisoners of war to be executed. It is a mystery as to whether the men-at-arms
and archers killed them voluntarily or had to be made to by their superior
officers. It is even unknown how many
men were present on the day from each side, much less how many were executed or
even were killed in total. The true
question which was asked in this case was whether or not King Henry V was
guilty of what amounts to war crimes. The titular Courts of Chivalry would have
found Henry innocent. As sovereign, he
had the right to suspend any law of chivalry especially when the campaign in
general was at risk. Unfortunately, the Courts of History have not been so
kind. As time has progressed, historians
have become more vocal and considerably harsher in their judgement of Henry’s
actions and in modern times at least would appear to have found him guilty of
war crimes. The one thing that is so
easily forgotten however is that had Henry spared the lives of the prisoners
and had the French continued their renewed attack, there was every chance that
Henry’s still-outnumbered army would have been destroyed utterly. This makes Henry’s actions self-defence in
the truest sense and so immune from prosecution, regardless of the
condemnations of the more recent historians.
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