Battle of Agincourt Site and Museum

...and Azincourt between which the battle was fought, still exist and are probably not much bigger than they were then. The area is lost in the hinterland behind the Côte d'Opale, in a network of small villages, farms and lanes far from the usual tourist routes to and from the Channel. Even though I know where it is I always have trouble actually locating it on a map. Hesdin is the nearest big town, and it's to the north of that.


...household was untouched by the battle - fathers, sons, husbands were killed or captured. It is said that the flower of French chivalry was cut down. There were so many dead they had to be tipped into burial pits. Near the battlefield is a monument to them, but, erected in the 19th century, it is unlikely to mark an actual burial spot. Although nicely set in a glade, it is a rather uncared for looking affair, the inscription almost totally effaced. ... more

How many battles has this country fought? Thousands. How many against France? A good few. And how many of those did we win? Our fair share. So why when we lock horns with the old enemy in a sporting contest is it always Agincourt that is invoked, and not, say, Crécy, Poitiers, Trafalgar or Waterloo, great victories all? It happened again a few weeks ago in the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup. The headlines screamed about "the Agincourt spirit", great chunks of Shakespeare's Henry V were quoted and chainmail was the fancy dress of choice among the supporters.

"Old men forget…
But we in it shall be remembered"

Despite, or because of, having very little in the way of eye-witness accounts, this victory has assumed mythical proportions. It is certainly true that the English army was vastly out-numbered (as much as four or five to one), greatly weakened, and facing the flower of French chivalry. The outcome was therefore nothing less than a God-ordained miracle, and was presented as such both by Henry and the spin-doctors of the day, the minstrels. Really, there are so many aspects which combine to make this redound down the ages. The underdog wins against huge odds. The yeoman stock of archers triumph against the mounted knights. And a charismatic young king, leading from the front, proves that God and right are on his side as he strives to unite a divided kingdom. It's a terrific script and no, we haven't forgotten. What it says about English teams on the sports field, however, assuming that they are the underdogs and only win by divine intervention is not exactly complimentary!

"Then shall we call this the field of Agincourt"

So the name is known but it lacks a sense of place. The battlefield can still be clearly seen and there is a small, but rather good, visitor centre. Compared with the world war 2 Normandy sites, the world war 1 sites further north in Belgium, Waterloo, Hastings and many others, it has the air of an inconsequential skirmish. The villages of Maisoncelles (where Henry had his camp), and Tramecourt and Azincourt between which the battle was fought, still exist and are probably not much bigger than they were then. The area is lost in the hinterland behind the Côte d'Opale, in a network of small villages, farms and lanes far from the usual tourist routes to and from the Channel. Even though I know where it is I always have trouble actually locating it on a map. Hesdin is the nearest big town, and it's to the north of that.

"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers"

You will not be jostled by crowds. It's not much visited because it's off the radar, but neither does the site announce itself to any great extent. You are almost in the village before signs for the battlefield appear. As you get closer, cardboard cut-outs of crossbowmen, archers and knights peek coyly out of the hedges as if they don't want to push themselves forward too much. Obviously it does not have the resonance for the French that it has for the English but there are plenty of English tourists in France to provide a market. Azincourt, however, despite the visitor centre, remains tiny. There must be some shops, somewhere, and there is only one restaurant/brasserie which doesn't look as if it's geared up for crowds.

"That fought with us upon St Crispin's day"

The feast of Sts Crispian and Crispianus, martyred brothers, falls on 25 October, and that's not a bad time to go on a visit. It will be quiet; it always is. It will probably be damp and misty as it was in 1415. But most importantly the fields will have been ploughed. Take a look at the great glistening clods moulded by the ploughs and you will begin to understand the weapon which, with the English longbow, defeated the French. For we are in Somme country here, and this mud performed the same function then as it did five centuries later. The French mounted knights, having charged the English line, turned the ploughed field into a mudbath. The horses got stuck, men who were unhorsed got bogged down in their heavy armour, and all were at the mercy of the lightly armoured, mobile archers.

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with the English dead"

So it was not the English who filled the breach with their dead but the French. The roll call of the dead was truly astonishing. Again, an eerie similarity echoes down the centuries: almost no noble French household was untouched by the battle - fathers, sons, husbands were killed or captured. It is said that the flower of French chivalry was cut down. There were so many dead they had to be tipped into burial pits. Near the battlefield is a monument to them, but, erected in the 19th century, it is unlikely to mark an actual burial spot. Although nicely set in a glade, it is a rather uncared for looking affair, the inscription almost totally effaced. The English by comparison lost a few hundred, the only notable casualty being the Duke of York.

"Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war"

If you follow the plan provided by the visitor centre in the village you will be taken on a wide circle via Maisoncelles. This route takes you past an orientation table and explanation board, though the board is half destroyed, whether by weather or vandalism, and the orientation table is totally incomprehensible. It also situated well away from the centre of action. Still, while you're here, you may as well contemplate an unsavoury episode of the battle. Maisoncelles was the English camp and where the baggage train was left. Some locals decided to rifle a few of the wagons while the army's attention was understandably elsewhere. Word got through to Henry that the camp followers were under attack and he assumed, wrongly, that the French were trying to outflank him. He ordered that all the French prisoners be killed. Now this was quite contrary to the rules of medieval warfare: a prisoner was the responsibility of his captor until he was released by ransom. To "cry havoc" was a specific order and meant, more or less, OK lads, you may now loot, pillage, burn and rape. Henry, on the other hand, was a strict disciplinarian and any looting was summarily punished by death. Yet here he was bending the accepted protocol and his own rules in a major way. History tut tuts but a winner gets away with murder.

Back in the present day, if you take my advice, do not go via Maisoncelles. Instead, at the end of the village of Azincourt take a sharp left towards Tramecourt. Less than a mile long, and dead straight, this road is pretty much where the English front line stood. A small lay-by, big enough for a couple of coaches or a few cars, is provided. The landscape is not the same as it was in 1415: the trees on either side which acted as a funnel and exacerbated the French entrapment have gone. But it has the virtue of being quiet. For whole minutes you can hear no 21st century noise; then you can fill your head with shouts, screams, the thud of horses' hooves, the crash of metal, the zinging of arrows ….

"And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here"

Well, maybe. There is some evidence that Henry made a speech before the battle, as generals before and since have done, telling his men what an honour it was being about to be killed. More likely the archers were wishing they were at home in bed in England. At this point the army had been in France for nearly three months. The siege of Harfleur had lasted much longer than intended and the scourge of medieval armies - dysentery - had decimated the force. From Harfleur they had marched for two weeks trying to reach the safety of English held Calais, harried all the way by the French. Now they were wet through having spent the night in the open in pouring rain, stood for a nerve-jangling two hours while each side dared the other to attack and waited for the French, carrying death-dealing sharp metallic objects, to charge at them.

The visitor centre is particularly good at giving us an idea of these weapons. You can try and heft a broadsword, or appreciate the strength needed to flex a longbow. This is the kind of interactive hands-on exhibit which really does add something to diagrams and descriptions. The longbow, of course, gets pride of place, and its shape is cleverly incorporated into the exterior design of the building. The whole thing is well thought out, informative about a complex period of history and even-handed. A centrepiece is a tableau with models of Henry V and the Constable of France having a "conversation" the night before the battle. It's well done, and an engaging way of imparting information, although not a format that does anything for me. I preferred the films, diagrams and model layouts, and trying and failing to lift a broadsword. This centre is another triumph of a "happy few", which is rapidly becoming a recurring theme in this review. Started some 20 years ago by a small group of local enthusiasts it eventually got regional funding to expand into today's excellent museum.

"…. that the contending kingdoms
Of France and England …
May cease their hatred"

So what was it all for? Henry V wanted to claim the throne of France as part of his "due rights and inheritances" stretching back through complicated history to the Norman Conquest. He also needed to prove his personal legitimacy as the son of a usurper and king of a united England. As a direct result of Agincourt he was named as heir to the French throne and was welcomed back to London in a triumph of Roman proportions. Six years later he was dead - of dysentery, ironically - England launched into the Wars of the Roses and France won back all the territory Henry had gained. That was the end of that Camelot.

A final problem for me is how to rate this site. In the end I sat firmly on the fence and gave it three stars. For something that looms so large in the national psyche, it is small scale. To get the most out of it you need to work at it: either gen up beforehand or absorb everything the little museum has to tell you. If you have a casual interest, combine it with visiting something else. But you should get at least a whiff of the spirit of Agincourt. What we really need is to bottle it and present it to the new England manager. 

...less