Middle English Literature

2
Force and Order
Battle of Agincourt
The Hundred Years’ War is a misnomer not only because the hostilities
between England and France lasted from 1337 to 1453, but also because,
as with much medieval warfare, engaged fighting was comparatively infre-
quent during this period. Major battles usually lasted less than two weeks,
commonly with less than 3,000 people on each side, siege being a far more
common form of achieving victory. Cause for war began mounting when the
French king Charles IV died in 1328 with no heir. Edward III, his nephew,
had a good claim to the throne, but the French peers chose Charles’s
cousin, Philip VI of Valois. In May 1337 Philip VI confiscated Edward’s
duchy of Gascony in southwestern France, and in October Edward laid claim
to the French throne. The war would not close until England’s alliance with
Burgundy ended in 1435 and the English lost their last foothold in France,
Castillon, in 1453.
Henry V’s expedition through northwestern France began in August
1415 with a protracted siege on the town of Harfleur at the mouth of the
Seine. In October Henry decided to lead the remains of his army to Calais
instead of immediately departing by sea for England. The French, sensing
an easy victory, finally encountered the English at Agincourt in the after-
noon of October 24. English and French chronicles state different numbers
of forces on the two sides that prepared for battle that evening, but the
ratio seems to have been eight French to one Englishman. The Gesta Henrici
Quinti estimates a slightly greater disparity, with 60,000 French to 6,000
English. After a night in the open air and rain, the English amassed in three
groups of men-at-arms, each group flanked by archers. When the two forces

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finally encountered each other, the archers created havoc on the thick of the
French horses and armed men, who were already weighed down by armor
in the mud of a freshly ploughed field. The English forces were then able to
move in and counter-attack on horseback and foot.
The anonymous royal chaplain and writer of the Gesta claims – and is
generally agreed – to have been an eyewitness to several events he relates in
the prose chronicle: the king’s suppression of the 1414 Lollard uprising, the
English army’s expedition in France, Henry’s triumphant return to London
in November of the same year (see “Processions,” p. 209), and the 1416
meeting between the king and Emperor Sigismund. The writer’s descrip-
tions of Henry V, of the intervention of divine grace, and of Emperor
Sigismund signal that the Gesta is not only a reliable and important account,
but that it was also intended to be politically persuasive. Henry is character-
ized as a devout king, who succeeds in the face of immediate adversity and
who desires peace but has been forced into war by the intransigent French.
God intercedes at crucial points in the king’s attempts to reclaim his rights
to France, and all successes are due to God’s perception of the just nature
of Henry’s cause. While the audience is not definitively known, the Gesta
circulated quickly after its composition. Its most important effect may have
been on parliament and religious leaders, garnering financial and spiritual
support for the king’s next expedition to France, for which Henry was
preparing during the time of the chronicle’s writing. It was also probably
intended for Sigismund in order to combat French hostility at the Council
of Constance (see “The English and England,” p. 50).
Primary documents and further reading
Allmand, C. (2002) The Hundred Years War: England and France at War, c. 1300–