a little touch of Harry in the night

[lauradi7dw]

Tomorrow is (or would have been, pre-Vatican II) the feast of Saints Crispin & Crispinian. I won't have much time to post for most of the weekend (Biochemistry lurks frighteningly around the corner), so I'm doing it now.
I don't think there was anything glorious or valorous or even justifiable about Agincourt, but it looms large in medieval history (and leads to Joan of Arc, sort of).
An interesting TV documentary about it, in five parts starting with:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib8kGCFpJRo&feature=related

A computer animation of a non-existant battle, beginning with Branagh and ending with Tenpole Tudor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gV0YVjIzrl0

Comments

[ichseke.livejournal.com]

I caught a snippet on NPR over the weekend, to the effect that some French historians were doing some further work on Agincourt and were challenging the English tale of heroic archers turning the tide for England. Seems the English army was on the whole not well-behaved and that they burned some prisoners. For the first, I'm not aware that soldiers on campaign were expected to be particularly nice (until the 20th century, maybe); for the second, it's never been a secret that the prisoners were killed, their numbers having become too large to guard effectively with the limited English manpower. Burning would certainly be horrendous, if done to living prisoners, but it consumes both fuel and time, and doesn't sound practical in the heat of battle. Maybe they burned corpses?

Some friends visited the Azincourt memorial a few years ago and reported that the story-for-tourists was that the French were just too darned chivalrous for their own good.

IMHO, a small but not wildly remarkable battle, with an unexpected outcome that grew large in national mythology, temporarily affected the course of the war, and has ever since carried far more weight than it's really capable of.

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

I don't think there was any dispute that the soldiers who had been taken prisoner were slaughtered one way or another. I had heard the burning alive story.
The linked documentary claimed that the English had so many archers because it was the cheapest way to go - they were paid considerably less than the infantrymen and were quite effective.
A large quantity of French were killed, including many nobility and such. One day's work, but a pretty serious toll.