They Were Outnumbered Six to One. Starving. Sick. The French Laughed.

The Full Story

On 25 October 1415, a starving, dysentery-ridden English army faced the flower of French chivalry at Agincourt.

Henry V had invaded France with about 12,000 men. Disease and garrison duties had cut his force to mostly archers, and the numbers are contested: Anne Curry's research from the muster rolls puts it at around 9,000 English against some 12,000 French, while Juliet Barker and others reckon nearer 6,000 English against a French army several times larger. Either way, the English were outnumbered, hungry and sick, and the French included the cream of their nobility in full plate armour.

The French were so confident they argued over who would capture Henry for ransom.

Then the battle began.

The English longbowmen, common men, not nobles, unleashed a storm of arrows. Thousands of shafts darkening the sky. The French cavalry charged into a muddy killing ground, horses and men falling under the arrow storm.

The armoured French knights, dismounted and struggling through mud, were exhausted before they reached the English lines. The archers dropped their bows, drew swords and mallets, and went to work. The longbow did not win it alone: the rain-soaked mud, the narrow field between two woods, and French command errors did as much of the killing.

French casualties were catastrophic. The chronicles claim thousands dead, including dukes, counts and more than a thousand knights; the precise lists are chronicle-derived and uncertain. English dead numbered in the hundreds. The senior French nobility was gutted.

Agincourt became a symbol of English martial prowess. The common archer had defeated the armoured knight. The few had beaten the many. St Crispin's Day entered the language.