Comments by "Stephen Hill" (@stephenhill545) on "1415: The French Disaster Of Agincourt | Medieval Dead | Chronicle" video.

The, French won a pivotal battle at Patay in 1429. It was a massacre. The English never recovered and were forced out of France in 1453.
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It could pierce armour close-up. It was more a psychological weapon against armour, but if you weren't wearing good armour, it was devastating, especially as the archers put the arrowhead in the soil, which made sure the wound would go septic. That was deliberate by the way.
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The skeletons at Towton revealed that they had been clenching their teeth so hard out of fear during the battle that some of their crowns broke.
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Just a little aside. If you are of 100% English lineage and born in 1980, you had 14 male great grandparents 17 times removed at Agincourt. I had 7 because half of my family is scots/Irish, so I would have been well represented at Bannockburn. :)
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At Patay in 1429 the archers were killed. The French knights began using milanese armour which the arrows couldn't penetrate, and cut them down. From then on, the English struggled in France.
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@barnsnoble3105 yes, agree. The guy in charge was of lower status than the nobles. This happened at Bannockburn too, when the nobles conducted unsupported cavalry charges with disastrous results.
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Keegan says 18,000 v 12,000, and that the French third line did not engage due to the mud, as the men at arms couldn't keep their footing.
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@fredericksandelia9648 . The English Kings spoke English by this time. The nobility had French ancestory sure, but they didn't think of themselves as French. National identity wasn't as strong as in our age of nation states. It was much more about your local lord back then. The archers were from England too. You had to practice archery on a Sunday by law at that time. The war didn't start going badly until Charles the Mad died, and England got its own mad king, Henry VI. But objectively, England had little chance of winning with a population of under 2 million against a country of 10 million.
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Henry V reinforced and resupplied his force before leaving Harfleur.
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It was a dynastic claim.
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They had good armour. The bodkin arrow could only penetrate close-up. The problem they had at Agincourt was the muddy ground.
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The English marched straight toward them, provoked them by firing arrows at them from 400m, and hoped they would engage on terms suitable for the English. They should have stood still. Longbows aren't that effective from that range.
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The French also had some notable victories between Crecy and Aginciurt. They're just not talked about in England because they spoil our national myth of the invincibility of the longbow. Keegan ascribes their defeat to leaving their positions in treacherous muddy conditions. The men at arms found it hard to keep their footing. The French army broke the cardinal rule medieval warfare. Let your enemy come to you.
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@fredericksandelia9648 the French did rather well in the 1380s I believe. The war didn't become terminal until the 1440s. In hindsight the English had no chance. They were fighting a country of 10 million people with a population of 2 million, dependent on disunity in France and an alliance with Burgundy. Henry V. wasn't seeking a decisive engagement in 1415, just to let the French know he hadn't rescinded his claim.
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I'm not altogether sure how strong feelings of nationalism were at this time. This was an era of dynasties and local loyalties. Certainly we know that Scottish nationalism was well nigh nonexistent at Bannockburn. The age of nationalism had not arrived yet.
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This is true of course, but by this time the English royal House no longer thought of itself as French. This happened as a direct result of the hundred years war. Edward I d. 1407 was the first English king since the Norman Conquest not to speak French.
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They often shot the horses. They had armour though.
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It all went a bit pear-shaped after that. C'est la vie!
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Henry sent for reinforcements during the siege to replace losses and the sick. The army that left Harfleur was not disease ridden and bedraggled, but reinforced and freshly supplied. Henry would not have marched around northern France with a decimated sickly army.
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Yes, true. There was a belief in medieval warfare that you won if you forced the opponent to come to you.
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@ZombiesAteMyGF food was the problem. When the English invaded Scotland, the, Scots usually retreated because it was hard to keep a large army (14,000 or so) fed for longer than 2 weeks.
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@ihl0700677525 at Towton the Lancastrians left good defensive positions and engaged due to arrow fire. This is supposed to have happened at Agincourt.
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I doubt they see it like that. They probably don't know about it. We English all know Crecy, Agincourt, and Poitiers, because we won them. Castille, Patay etc are less known, but I bet your average French man can name them.
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@luismackenson but seriously; do you know better the battles you won or the battles you lost? Knowledge of the hundred years war is limited to the victories here, and, Agincourt gets special attention because of Shakespeare's Henry V.
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Until 1429 at Patay of course. After that the crossbow was king.
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Your great grandfather 17 times removed. You have 2,000 of those. There were only around 700,000 male adults in England at the time, and just under 1.5 % of them were at Agincourt. All other things being equal, 14 of your direct but distant male bloodline were at Agincourt. And 7 of mine because I have 2 irish/Scots male great grandparents
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