[Steppes] Happy Saint Crispin's Day
Leza M.
rogueofdundee at yahoo.com
Fri Oct 24 14:54:26 PDT 2003
I'm a Big Fan of Henry V and thought y'all might like to know and or be reminded of St. Crispins' Day. I remain,
Nzingha, The Moor Of Dundee.
On October 25, St. Crispin's Day 1415, the English and French met on
the battlefield of Agincourt, where the English under Henry V were
overtaken by a much larger force of French troops under the Marshal
of France, Jean Boucicaut. The English, who had been on French soil
since August, were already half-starved and battle weary, living off
plunder and ransom as they made their way eastward from Normandy to
Calais. On the evening of October 24, as a heavy rain fell, the
larger forces of Boucicaut trapped the English in a diamond-shaped
clearing between three wooded areas that surrounded the French
fortified towns of Agincourt, Tramecourt and Maisoncelles. Adopting a
strategy that had served his ancestor William the Conqueror well at
Hastings three centuries earlier, in the muddy clearing Henry took
the gambit of attacking from a well-defended position. The next
morning, beneath gray but dry skies, he moved his army forward and
separated his Welsh archers with their Yew longbows by placing them
between divisions of his men-at-arms.
As the English moved within bow range of the French cavalry, the
French mounted men-at-arms charged. The heavy mud of the ploughed
fields hampered their assault and sometimes knee- or waist-deep in
the muck, they became easy targets for the Welsh archers who cut them
down by the hundreds. The heavily armored Frenchmen tumbled into the
slop as their horses were felled by arrows, and they were either
trampled by other charging horses, smothered in their suits of armor,
or slain by the English soldiers as they lay helpless often three men
deep on the ground. The favored method of killing the fallen knights
was to lift the knight's visor and thrust a dagger through his eye.
Frightened, riderless horses, hemmed in by the woods turned and
retreated into their advancing compatriots, causing confusion and
mayhem as the accurate and deadly rain of arrows fell on the
battlefield. Those Frenchmen who made it across the field of death
were met by English soldiers and by sharp stakes imbedded in the
ground by archers. The third line of French soldiers, armed with
crossbows and rudimentary guns, observed the carnage of the
battlefield and fled, playing little part at all in the fight.
Within an hour the battle was over. The number of French prisoners
far outweighed the number of English available to guard them and
Henry was forced to make a bloodthirsty decision. Rather than allow
the Frenchmen to be ransomed to fight again, he ordered their
slaughter. When the carnage was over, on the field of Agincourt lay
11,000 dead Frenchmen. Among them the Duke of Brabant and the Count
of Nevers, brothers of the Duke of Burgundy, the Duke of Alencon, the
Duke of Bar, Charles d'Albret, Constable of France, the counts of
Marle, Roucy, Dalm, Vaudemot and Dammartin.
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