Seein how its St. Crispin's Day thought this was appropriate.
British victory at Agincourt may be punctured by academia
By James Glanz
The New York Times
Posted: 10/25/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT
MAISONCELLE, France - The heavy, clay-laced mud behind the cattle pen on Antoine Renault's farm looks as treacherous as it must have nearly 600 years ago, when King Henry V rode from a spot near here to lead a sodden and exhausted English army against a French force that was said to outnumber his by as much as five to one.
No one can ever take away the shocking victory by Henry and his "band of brothers," as William Shakespeare would famously call them, on St. Crispin's Day, Oct. 25, 1415.
They devastated a force of heavily armored French nobles who had gotten bogged down in the region's sucking mud, riddled by thousands of arrows from opposing longbowmen and outmaneuvered by common soldiers with much lighter gear. It became known as the Battle of Agincourt.
But Agincourt's status as perhaps the greatest victory against overwhelming odds in military history has been called into doubt by a group of historians in Britain and France who have painstakingly combed an array of military and tax records from that time and now take a skeptical view of the numbers handed down by medieval chroniclers.
The historians have concluded that the English could not have been outnumbered by more than about two to one. And depending on how the math is carried out, Henry might have faced something closer to an even fight, said Anne Curry, a professor at the University of Southampton who is leading the study.
Those figures threaten an image of the battle that even professional researchers and academics have been reluctant to challenge in the face of Shakespearean prose and centuries of English pride, Curry said.
"It's just a myth, but it's a myth that's part of the British psyche," Curry said.
The work, which has received both glowing praise and criticism from other historians in the United States and Europe, is the most striking account to emerge from a new science of military history.
The new accounts tend to be not only more quantitative but also more attuned to political, cultural and technological factors, and focus more on the experience of the common soldier than on grand strategies and heroic deeds.
By James Glanz
The New York Times
Posted: 10/25/2009 01:00:00 AM MDT
MAISONCELLE, France - The heavy, clay-laced mud behind the cattle pen on Antoine Renault's farm looks as treacherous as it must have nearly 600 years ago, when King Henry V rode from a spot near here to lead a sodden and exhausted English army against a French force that was said to outnumber his by as much as five to one.
No one can ever take away the shocking victory by Henry and his "band of brothers," as William Shakespeare would famously call them, on St. Crispin's Day, Oct. 25, 1415.
They devastated a force of heavily armored French nobles who had gotten bogged down in the region's sucking mud, riddled by thousands of arrows from opposing longbowmen and outmaneuvered by common soldiers with much lighter gear. It became known as the Battle of Agincourt.
But Agincourt's status as perhaps the greatest victory against overwhelming odds in military history has been called into doubt by a group of historians in Britain and France who have painstakingly combed an array of military and tax records from that time and now take a skeptical view of the numbers handed down by medieval chroniclers.
The historians have concluded that the English could not have been outnumbered by more than about two to one. And depending on how the math is carried out, Henry might have faced something closer to an even fight, said Anne Curry, a professor at the University of Southampton who is leading the study.
Those figures threaten an image of the battle that even professional researchers and academics have been reluctant to challenge in the face of Shakespearean prose and centuries of English pride, Curry said.
"It's just a myth, but it's a myth that's part of the British psyche," Curry said.
The work, which has received both glowing praise and criticism from other historians in the United States and Europe, is the most striking account to emerge from a new science of military history.
The new accounts tend to be not only more quantitative but also more attuned to political, cultural and technological factors, and focus more on the experience of the common soldier than on grand strategies and heroic deeds.