St Crispin's Day by Griff Hosker

Author:Griff Hosker [Hosker, Griff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9798649305914
Google: 0P-XzQEACAAJ
Amazon: B089C3YXQP
Goodreads: 53810990
Publisher: Sword Books Ltd.
Published: 2020-06-21T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

The hamlet we had found was Maisoncelles and it was on a hill with a wood before it. The dozen or so houses were just a mile from Azincourt which was a much larger village sporting a castle. Of course, none of the English could pronounce the French word and so we all called the village, Agincourt. The King rode through the army to join me and together we rode hard with the vanguard to the wood just north of Maisoncelles. The people had fled to the castle and villages north of it. for it was quite obvious that a battle would take place and the villagers knew that was no place for bystanders. I saw the French vanguard begin to position themselves on the high ground just below the other two villages.

King Henry was a practical man and not given to histrionics. King Richard would have ranted and railed about his ill-luck and Henry Bolingbroke would have been looking for a political escape route but King Henry was a better man, leader and king than both of them. Even as he viewed the French while they filled the ground opposite us, he was thinking of a way out and how to defeat the French. As he had shown at Shrewsbury, he was not afraid to die. “Well Strongstaff, if that is their advance guard then we can assume that they will have six times that number when it comes to battle.”

He was inviting a comment, “Aye, my lord, I would guess closer to thirty thousand men.” I waved a hand at the ploughed field before us. Recently harvested it looked like it had been ploughed to sow the next crop. It was bordered by the road to Blangy and beyond it was the Forest of Tramecourt. “This could be a killing ground for our archers.” I glanced up at the sky where the clouds were increasing. “And if it rains…”

“This will become a muddy morass.” The King nodded and looked behind us at the trees, “If it went ill for us, we could slip through those trees behind us.” He pointed across the field to the larger village the French were using as their base. “That castle and those houses mean that they will be concentrated between it and those trees there.” He nodded towards the hamlet of Tramecourt to the east of the French position. “This is as good a position as we could have wished, and the French have chosen it. Honour is satisfied. We dig in here and plant stakes. We will put our camp here close to the trees. We will put our three battles here with a line of archers before them. The bulk of the longbowmen will be on the flanks. I will echelon them so that we can pour arrows into their flanks. Let us wait for them to attack us and then use our greatest weapon the archer. We will keep our men on foot and test the valour of these French, but I know that God is on our side and I doubt not that we shall prevail.

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