Henry V by Teresa Cole

Author:Teresa Cole [Cole, Teresa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781445636795
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2015-01-28T05:00:00+00:00

9

INTERLUDE

26 OCTOBER 1415 – AUGUST 1417

There is no way of knowing exactly how many were killed at Agincourt. The heralds, whose job it was to number and name the dead, were concerned only with those of rank. Nobody bothered to count the common soldiers. What is clear though is that the French army, which massively outnumbered the English when living, similarly massively outnumbered them among the dead.

Estimates of French losses have varied from four to eleven thousand. Our English chaplain suggests 1,600 nobles and knights and four to five thousand esquires lost their lives. The meticulous Burgundian chronicler Enguerrand de Monstrelet, writing in the 1440s, records some three hundred names before giving up and admitting ‘one cannot know how to record them all, because there were too many of them’.

Nor is it just in sheer numbers that the list is impressive. It reads like a roll call of French nobility. Three royal dukes (Alençon, Bar and Brabant) went to their deaths along with at least eight counts and an archbishop (presumably a throwback to the old days of militant priests), the constable, d’Albret, an admiral, the grand master and the steward of the king’s household, and the grand master of the crossbowmen. Guillaume de Martel, bearer of the sacred oriflamme, also perished and that banner was lost never to reappear, no doubt trampled and torn to pieces in the mud of Agincourt.

The local area was almost completely despoiled of its lesser nobility, while from across France fathers, sons and brothers died together. John the Fearless lost both brothers. The master of crossbowmen died with three out of his five sons.

Many more were never identified. They were too disfigured, or came from far away and none of their fellows were left to claim them. The right of the victors to strip everything of value from the slain complicated things. Once arms and armour were removed the dead had a terrible likeness, and this stripping began immediately after the battle. Indeed, so thoroughly was this plundering carried out that Henry made an order that no one was to take more weapons and armour than he could personally bear. All the rest was piled into a nearby barn and set alight. There was no knowing how many of the enemy were still in the neighbourhood and there were enough weapons around literally to supply an army.

When the rain began again the English retired to Maisoncelles for the night, carrying with them not only their plunder and prisoners, but also provisions left behind by the French to give them a first decent meal for days. Then it was the turn of the locals to pick over the battlefield so that by the next day it is recorded that the slain were left ‘as naked as the day they were born’. Nevertheless, so great were the heaps of bodies that even two days later some were still being found alive – though none of these survived for much longer.

By contrast the English casualty list, though similarly incomplete, was tiny.

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