“He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”
Shakespeare, Henry V (Act IV, Scene III),
It was on October 25th in 1415 that Henry V of England led his troops to a resounding victory over France at Agincourt, although the English were outnumbered, and fighting on French territory. Making victory even less likely was the fact that his troops were basically on foot, while the French forces included many armed and mounted knights.
Henry had one important thing on his side – longbows. The longbow wasn’t new technology, but the English had turned it into a devastating military system. Henry had some 5,000 archers and they had plenty of arrows. He also had the ideal setting for his archers to confront the French advance. The battlefield was a narrow, muddy opening between two dense forests, basically the worst possible conditions for the French. The mud impeded the French advance, while the dense woodlands made it impossible for the French to create flanking or rear attacks. The terrain forced them to make direct charges, straight into hail after hail of English arrows. The horsemen who successfully approached the English lines found that the archers were protected from cavalry charges by sharpened, outward-facing stakes. In the narrow opening afforded them, with piles of bodies to their rear, dense forests on either side, and thousands of well-sheltered English longbowmen in front of them, the French could neither charge nor retreat effectively. Once the French formation collapsed, the battle became a slaughter. The English were merciless. Historians estimate that the archers may have fired hundreds of thousands of arrows that day. The piles of French bodies were so high that it was difficult to identify exactly who did die that day. Some of their wives had to find out over time, simply from the fact that their husbands never returned. The bloodshed didn’t even end with the eventual French retreat. Henry ordered most of his prisoners killed, although how many actually died in the massacre is uncertain. He spared only those of the very highest ranks, and even ordered the killing of some men worth ransoming.
Here is a concise description of the action:
Per Wikipedia:
“The French had suffered a catastrophic defeat. In all, around 6,000 of their fighting men lay dead on the ground. The list of casualties, one historian has noted, “read like a roll call of the military and political leaders of the past generation”. Among them were 90–120 great lords and bannerets killed, including three dukes, nine counts and one viscount, also an archbishop. Of the great royal office holders, France lost its constable, an admiral, the Master of Crossbowmen, Master of the Royal Household and prévôt of the marshals. 3,069 knights and squires were killed, while at least 2,600 more corpses were found without coats of arms to identify them. Entire noble families were wiped out in the male line, and in some regions an entire generation of landed nobility was annihilated. The bailiffs of nine major northern towns were killed, often along with their sons, relatives and supporters. In the words of Juliet Barker, the battle “cut a great swath through the natural leaders of French society. Estimates of the number of prisoners vary between 700 and 2,200, amongst them the dukes of Orléans and Bourbon, the counts of Eu, Vendôme, Richemont (brother of the Duke of Brittany and stepbrother of Henry V) and Harcourt, and marshal Jean Le Maingre.”
In contrast, Shakespeare contended that the English casualties amounted to 29 men, of which 25 were unnamed, presumably untitled.
(Cough. Cough.)
OK, that was a bit of bullshit, although it wasn’t entirely Shakespeare’s bullshit. His source, Holinshed, reported the same absurdly low figure—then immediately added that “writers of greater credit” put the English dead at more than 500 or 600. Shakespeare, displaying the instincts of a gifted press secretary, went with 29.
Exaggeration aside, Agincourt was one of history’s great tactical victories, destroying a larger force and wiping out a remarkable portion of the French military and political leadership. It also greatly strengthened Henry’s position in France. After five more years of war, conquest and French civil strife, the Treaty of Troyes recognized Henry as regent of France and heir to the French throne.
(He would die a little more than two years later, just weeks before Charles VI, and therefore never actually sat on that throne.)
More important than any of that to us today is that the victory inspired one of Shakespeare’s best speeches, as cited above and shown below. Ol’ Shakey often used his speeches and monologues to deliver melancholy, philosophical ruminations about the fragility of life, but this was different. It was a stirring call to action for country and brotherhood.
And the most lasting effect was that it caused Henry to marry the daughter of a spectacularly mad king (he had spells where he let no one touch him because he thought he was made out of glass and might shatter) and beget a catatonic son, leading directly to an English civil war where the two great Plantagenet factions of England pretty much killed each other off, leading to a throne occupied by a man without a drop of legitimate English royal blood in him. It seems that Henry’s widow had gotten very up close and personal with some Welshman named Tudor, their grandson being someone who styled himself Henry VII.
The French? Joan of Arc, one of Henry’s brothers blowing up the Burgundy alliance, two clever kings, the second causing Burgundy’s Charles the Foolhardy to (literally) get eaten on by wolves, and, voila, the most powerful state in Europe.
That’s why I love history. So quirky and unpredictable. Not at all moving in an inexorable procession, the way some people who hang out here would have you believe.
This is also why the British call French rries “crisps”. This fact is largely unknown, even in the UK, because I just made it up. (It is an “alternative” fact, which means it is true because I said so.)
Similarly, Welsh ‘rabbit’ is actually an ermine, just during a different season when its fur pattern changes and its ears grow long.
The English were just tired of being called `silly English Kaniggets`.
It is, of course, somewhat of a misconception to view the Battle of Agincourt as a conflict between the ‘English’ and the ‘French’. Henry V was a direct descendant as monarch from the Normans, from what is now northern France, who had, centuries before, conquered the territories that we now refer to as ‘England’. To the extent that the terms would have had meaning to Henry V – and they probably would not have entirely, at least not from a currently contemporary perspective – he would have considered himself as much ‘French’ as ‘English’. While Henry V spoke English as a native tongue – and promoted its usage in court – he was the first Norman monarch of England to do so and he was at least as comfortable in French (albeit his English speech would be largely unintelligible to us now, as his French would be to modern French speakers). The Battle of Agincourt was part of Henry V’s campaign to reassert control over Norman territories and over France more generally. Indeed, he was fighting, from his perspective, as ‘King of France’, and he almost certainly would have been formally crowned as such if he had lived a bit longer during his continuing military campaigns on the continent after his victory in Agincourt.
Even more fundamentally, the modern concept of the nation-states of ‘England’ and ‘France’, and nation-states more generally, would not have had meaning to the people at the time. Europe was not composed of nation-states, but of kingdoms. The scope of kingdoms generally did not depend on common culture, language or necessarily even geographic sense, but on what a monarch inherited, gained by marriage, treaty or other arrangement, or conquered militarily. People were not ‘citizens’ of a ‘state’, but subject of a monarch.
It is always a danger, in respect of full and accurate understanding, to try to overlay contemporary political and cultural understandings over past periods of history where they would have had limited direct applicability.
The Normans, as their name suggests, were descendants of Norse invaders, so they were as much Viking as they were French.
By Henry V’s day they were well integrated into the politics, cultures and genetic mix of what we now consider France and England, but for sure they were still a somewhat distinct, and very successful, group whose roots went back to the Viking invasions.
Lost in all this, the saints (yes, there were two) for whom the day is named. Crispin and Crispinian were twin brothers who made a fortune making shoes. They are the patron saints of cobblers, lace makers, saddle makers, tanners, and weavers.
So if you REALLY want to celebrate St. Crispin’s day… Go get some new shoes. Leather ones.
Today not a particularly good day for other Saints.
We dont come here for the wordy articles or “pigskin” shit. Save it for your Tumblr, please.
If you come only for naked women, just bookmark
https://othercrap.com/category/beauty/
instead of
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“We”? Speak for yourself. Most of us love this stuff.
Please don’t think you speak for everyone. You don’t. Just skip over the stuff you don’t care for and you won’t have to show off what a clod you are.
I like Scoop’s mix of nudes and interesting commentary, including commentary about issues that are not related to the nudes. I don’t read every long piece of commentary, since some are about subject areas that are not my thing, but I do read many of them.
Ditto.
Excellent write-up, Greg.
On film, Laurence Olivier’s Richard iii and especially his Othello were the best ever. Of Olivier’s Hamlet, only that final sword fight was great. (Derek Jacobi’s Royal Shakespeare taping as Hamlet with Patrick Stewart / Captain Pickard as Claudius was my favorite Hamlet.) But nobody beats Kenneth Branaugh’s Henry V. Should’ve won him the Oscar that year.
I have never seen Nicol Williamson as Hamlet. Have you?
I have not, alas! My favorite AUDIO Hamlet was Paul Schofield. Ted Derek Jacobi Hamlet takes its time with the whole text. When Hamlet’s busting balls, he’s VERY funny. When Franco Zeffirelli cast Mel Gibson as the Dane, they stripped away half the text. ALL the humor got jettisoned. Way back one half century, Richard Chamberlain star Hyde off his first monologue WAY too angry, left little room to amp up further. HIS final saber-&-rapier fight was very extensive, though. All fun.
I’m going to try to track down the film of Nicol’s Hamlet. I think Hannibal Lecter played Claudius!
Yes. I found it. My memory was right. Anthony Hopkins was Claudius. I found the film and watched a few minutes of it. The director/editor, Tony Richardson, cut it down to a running time below two hours, so it’s not one for the purist. I found Nicol’s interpretation eccentric, but credible. He was quite a good actor, if a bit of an oddball. If you are interested in it, e-mail me and I’ll give you a link to download it.
There’s an old BBC show called Connections that I think went into this battle and how many inventions made over time impacted history.
France may be the country with the most horrible strategic losses in history based on being both too offensive or too defensive. Napolean’s advances into Russia were stopped by scorched earth, dragging his Army into nothingness. WW1 was a slaughterhouse against the Germany war industry and trench warfare that antiquated French cavalry wasn’t prepared for. And WW2 had hunkering down behind the Maginot line and being completely defensive until Germany stormed the country.
Hannibal as Claudius ! ! ! Love it!
He made for a very compelling Titus Andronicus.
Ralph Fiennes in Coriolanus (2011) was wild, as well. Not as fun, but nonetheless worthy.
Joss Whedan in 2010 shot a ten-day Black-&-White version of Much Ado About Nothing, also terrific — Nathan Fillion as Dogberry.
It creates an unusual dynamic between Hamlet and Claudius. Hopkins was 32, but looked very youthful, Williamson was 33, looked older, and was balding. The actress playing Hamlet’s mother looked (and was) about the same age as Hamlet!
Nicol didn’t declaim and often ignored meter to speak as conversationally as possible. He speaks rapidly, and aggressively. In general, he was a scheming, fidgety, mature and sarcastic character from the outset. (Certainly not a callow, indecisive youth, and decidedly not a sweet prince.)
Tony Richardson made an unusual artistic decision. Instead of “opening up” the play for film, he “closed it down.” A very high percentage of the film consists of facial close-ups with a black or dark background!
Richardson used Nicol Williamson’s voice as the voice of the ghost, which makes sense to me, but would work better if they had cut the scenes where other people see the apparition. I think the play would work better if the “ghost” is just Hamlet’s own suspicions confirming themselves. I think it would work even better if the ghost were only seen in Hamlet’s dreams, but there I go, telling Shakespeare how to write. Talk about presumptuous!