Anne Curry - Agincourt 1415 A New History

O ver the years, many people have encouraged and assisted my work on Agincourt. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to M. Boulet, the mayor of the commune of Azincourt, to M. and Mme Delclusse and M. Christophe Gilliot of the Centre Historique and Eric Revet and Bertrand Klein, its architects, and to Siobhan Stevens of the Centre Verginaud and Southlands School, who have made me so welcome on my visits. I am also grateful to Philippe Cailleux and Richard Jones for information on Harfleur and its fortifications. Discussions with fellow enthusiasts Robert Hardy, Matthew Bennett and Clifford Rogers have always been stimulating and good fun even if we have had to agree to disagree. Laetitia Renault provided very useful assistance with sources in the Bibliothque Nationale and Shelagh Mitchell with names of archers in the records of The National Archives. I am happy to acknowledge the support of the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust through the award of a BA/Leverhulme Senior Research Fellowship in 2004, without which the research and writing of this book could not have been achieved. I am also grateful to the University of Southampton for additional financial support. My husband and son have lived with Agincourt for almost as long as I have and have never failed to ask those difficult questions or to indulge my desire to retrace Henry Vs steps just one more time. My special thanks to them, and to all those who have helped and supported me in this project but must remain nameless here.

Unpublished materials are to be found in The National Archives, Kew, unless otherwise stated.

T his is an important year for everyone interested in Agincourt since it marks the 600th anniversary of the battle. I write this preface shortly after the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in his budget that 1 million had been allocated for the 201516 financial year to the commemoration of Agincourt, placing it on a par with Waterloo 200, which received 1 million at the same time, and Magna Carta 800, which had received the same sum in 2014. That Agincourt has such national significance comes as no surprise to me. Over my many years of writing and giving talks about the battle, I have never ceased to be impressed by the level of interest which many people have shown. Agincourt means a great deal in the English-speaking world. This book, first published in 2005, has generated, and continues to generate, controversy.

The greatest bone of contention has been the question of numbers. Using the surviving financial records in The National Archives, I calculated that the English had more men at the battle than the 900 men-at-arms and the 5,000 archers claimed in the narrative written by a priest accompanying Henrys army (the Gesta Henrici Quinti ). The army with which Henry V invaded France in 1415 was one of the largest to leave England during the whole of the Hundred Years War, with between 11,000 and 12,000 men. Even with deaths at the siege of Harfleur, the invaliding home of men suffering from dysentery and the placing of a garrison of 1,200 into the captured town, the records leave at least 8,500 men, probably more, with Henry as he marched northwards to Calais.