The Battle of Agincourt, 1415: Why France Lost the Fight
- Davit Grigoryan
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
On October 25, 1415, a handful of English archers defeated a much larger French army at the Battle of Agincourt. Why did the knights, the symbol of medieval power, sink into the mud under a storm of arrows? How did tactical mistakes and social arrogance lead to disaster? This article looks at the fatal choices of the French commanders, the secret of the longbow’s power, and the battle’s effects on the course of the Hundred Years’ War. Find out why the Treaty of Troyes (1420) robbed France of its independence and how the loss of its noble class shaped the kingdom’s future.
Agincourt — the battle that shook Europe
October 25, 1415. Northern France. Here, on a narrow strip of land between a forest and a swamp, the fate of two kingdoms was decided. Henry V’s English army, worn out by hunger and dysentery, was ready to face the larger French forces. The French were certain they would win in just a few hours. But by sunset, the battlefield near the village of Agincourt had become a mass grave for the finest French knighthood.
Agincourt became a symbol of the old world’s collapse. Armed with longbows, English archers simply swept away the heavy cavalry, the elite of medieval armies. Despite having more men, the French repeated the same mistakes they made at Crécy in 1346: their knights, dressed in expensive armor, got stuck in the mud and became easy targets for arrows. But the defeat was not only about tactics. Fifteenth-century France was torn by civil strife. The feudal lords, hungry for personal glory, ignored the plan of the experienced Constable Charles d’Albret and chose to attack “the chivalric way”—head-on.
As early as 1368, King Charles V the Wise ordered mass training of archers, but the nobles saw the bow as “a weapon for commoners.” Forty-seven years later, this neglect cost France thousands of lives.
Consequences:
1420 – The humiliating Treaty of Troyes: Henry V is declared heir to the French throne.
1422 – The English king dies of dysentery, but the “shadow of Agincourt” hangs over France for decades.
The battle lasted only a few hours, but its echo rang through the centuries. How did a handful of Englishmen change the course of the Hundred Years’ War? And why do historians still argue today about what ruined the French—arrows, mud, or their pride?
On the eve of disaster: How Henry V ended up at Agincourt
In the summer of 1415, 28-year-old King Henry V of England set out on an adventure worthy of a knight’s tale. His goal was Normandy, which he believed was rightfully his. But the road to glory began with failure: peaceful talks with the French came to a dead end.
The Siege of Harfleur: The First Mistake
On August 13, an English army of about 4,000 men landed at the mouth of the Seine. Their first target was the port of Harfleur—the “key to Normandy.” But the city, held by just 100 soldiers, was a tough nut to crack: its thick walls and eight towers held out for five weeks. On September 22, Harfleur fell, but the victory came at a high cost. Dysentery and battle wounds killed almost a third of the army.
A Fatal Decision
Instead of retreating, the king took a risk: on October 8, the remains of his army (about 2,800 men) set out for Calais to winter there. But the 250 km trek through enemy land became a nightmare. The French, hearing of Harfleur’s fall, mustered an army at Rouen and began to chase them.
Chasing a Ghost:
The French blocked the crossings over the Somme River, forcing the English to wander south searching for a way through.
On October 19, the English finally found a ford near the village of Béthencourt.
On October 24, the English, exhausted by hunger and disease, faced the French near Agincourt.
The Night Before the Battle
The field, squeezed between a forest and swamps, was soaked by rain. Both armies took their positions, but neither dared to attack in the dark. English chroniclers write of prayers and acts of repentance in Henry’s camp. French sources mention his speech to the troops: “If we lose, the knights will be taken for ransom, but the commoners will be slaughtered.”
Why didn’t the French attack first?
The answer is simple: overconfidence. The French commanders believed they would easily crush their exhausted enemy in the morning. But they overlooked two key things:
The narrow battlefield—only about 700 meters wide—cancelled out their advantage in numbers.
Mud and English longbows turned a knightly charge into suicide.
“We don’t need strategy,” the French nobles said. “Our armor and swords will win the day.” They would soon pay a terrible price for that pride.
The Bow’s Victory Over Pride: How Tactics and Arrogance Decided the Outcome of the Battle
The morning of October 25 found the two armies in striking contrast. The French, who had gathered up to 30,000 fighters (the exact numbers are lost in the chronicles), looked like a festive tournament: knights in gilded armor, banners bearing the crests of noble houses, and the shine of blades. But beneath the parade’s splendor lay chaos. The heavy cavalry, which made up the heart of the army, was clumsy; the infantry—peasants armed with converted scythes didn’t even have armor. The archers and crossbowmen, whom Charles V had once ordered to train “all the people,” now stood in the rear—the nobility deemed their presence on the front lines “unworthy.”
The English, by contrast, turned weaknesses into strengths. Their 2,800 fighters—hungry, sick, but hardened by battle—lined up on a narrow strip between the forest and the marshes. Welsh archers with longbows (taller than a man) drove stakes into the ground to strengthen their position, just as the Turks once did at Nicopolis. The light infantry in padded jackets did not sink into the mud, unlike the steel-clad French.
An hour before the battle, tempers flared in the French camp. Constable Charles d’Albret, a seasoned warrior, demanded, “Let the crossbowmen mow down their archers, and let the infantry wear them out!” But the Duke of Orléans, the king’s nephew, retorted, “The honor of the first strike belongs to the knights! Shall we let commoners steal our glory?”
Pride outweighed common sense. The heavy cavalry, having dismounted, began their attack across the muddy field. Every step was a struggle: thirty kilos of armor stuck in the mud, and English arrows—up to thirty thousand a minute!—found gaps in the plate. “They walked as if to the slaughter,” wrote the chronicler. “Some fell from their wounds, others from sheer exhaustion.”
October 25, 1415: the bloody harvest of Agincourt
At dawn, the French still hoped for a quick victory. Their knights, arrayed in three lines, shone in their armor, but the narrow field between the forest and the swamps (only 700 meters) turned their formation into a disordered crowd. The English, by contrast, took up a defensive stance: archers on the flanks behind a palisade of stakes, and infantry in the center in four ranks.
First attack: knights against arrows
The French cavalry charged forward, but the rain‐soaked mud held the horses fast. “They moved as if through tar,” wrote a Burgundian chronicler. When they reached the English lines, the riders ran into the stakes. Wounded horses threw their riders under the axes and daggers of the archers. Those who survived fell back, trampling their infantry.
Second wave: The dismounted knights
Constable Charles d’Albret led 5,000 dismounted knights into battle. Wearing armor of 30 kilograms, they had to cover 300 meters under a rain of arrows. English archers, firing up to 30,000 arrows a minute, aimed at gaps in the armor, at faces, and at the horses’ legs. By the time they clashed, the French could barely stand. “They fought like drunk men,” noted the chronicler Jean de Wavrin.
Blade versus Axe
The hand-to-hand fight went on for three hours. English foot soldiers, armed with hammers and long‑handled axes, finished off the fallen knights. King Henry V himself fought in the front lines—his helmet’s gold trim was chopped away. Despite their courage, the French died by the thousands: the Dukes of Brabant and Alençon and Constable d’Albret were slain.
Attack on the supply wagons and slaughter of prisoners
When about 600 French peasants attacked the English supply wagons, Henry V panicked. Fearing a strike on his rear, he ordered the prisoners killed. The knights refused—this meant no chance for ransom. Then, 200 archers cut the throats of thousands of bound French soldiers. “The cries were horrible, but the king called it a military necessity,” wrote a monk who saw it.
Results of the day
By evening, the field lay clogged with mud and blood. The French lost up to 10,000 men, including much of their nobility. The English lost no more than 400, among them the Duke of York, the king’s cousin. Henry V, hardly daring to believe his victory, ordered his men to sing “Non Nobis Domine” (“Not to us, O Lord, but to Your name”).
Consequences: The shadow of Agincourt over France
Victory at Agincourt did not bring England an instant triumph. Henry V, fearing a guerrilla war, returned home. But the battle marked a point of no return.
Treaty of Troyes (1420): The ghost king
France, drained by the loss of its nobles, recognized Henry V as heir to Charles VI the Mad. His marriage to Catherine of Valois, daughter of the French king, was meant to make his rule official. Ironically, Henry died at age 35 of dysentery in 1422, never becoming the full king of France. His heir, Henry VI, was only nine months old.
The price of pride
From 1415 to 1453, France sank into chaos. Burgundy and the Armagnacs fought for power, and the English seized Normandy. In 1429, the tide turned only with Joan of Arc’s rise, but her victories could not erase the shame of Agincourt.
A military revolution?
Agincourt buried the myth of the invincible knightly cavalry. The longbow—cheap and deadly—became the symbol of a new age. Yet the lesson went unlearned: the French kept relying on heavy cavalry (see the Battle of Patay, 1429), and the English, believing in their superiority, repeated their enemy’s mistakes at Formigny (1450).
Agincourt in memory
For the English, the battle symbolized “valor against overwhelming odds.” Shakespeare’s Henry V turned the slaughter into a patriotic myth. For the French, it was a tragedy to be hushed up; only by the nineteenth century did it become a lesson: “Pride destroys even the strongest.” The Hundred Years’ War ended in 1453. France kept its independence, but Agincourt remained a scar on its history—a reminder that one fatal mistake can undo centuries of glory.
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