Medieval Europe · 1337–1453 (Agincourt, 25 October 1415)

The Battle of Agincourt and the Hundred Years' War

By the Aurelius editorial team · 3 min read · Updated 15 October 2026

Last time: the Black Death killed perhaps a third to a half of Europe in 1347–51. It did not stop the war already under way between England and France, which carried on in fits and starts for another century.

On the morning of 25 October 1415, on a muddy field in northern France, a tired English army, weakened by dysentery and short of food, faced a much larger French force; by how much, historians still argue. By evening thousands of Frenchmen, among them the constable of France and three dukes, were dead, while English chroniclers counted their own dead in dozens.

How a crown became a war

When the last Capetian king of France died in 1328 without a son, the French chose his cousin Philip of Valois over Edward III of England, whose mother Isabella was the dead king's sister. The French magnates held that the crown could not pass through a woman; later lawyers justified this with the old Frankish “Salic law”. A second quarrel was over Gascony, which the English kings held as vassals of the French crown.

In 1337 Philip confiscated Gascony, and in 1340 Edward formally claimed the French throne. The conflict that followed is called the Hundred Years' War, a name invented by 19th-century historians; it lasted, with long truces, 116 years.

Longbows at Crécy

In August 1346 Edward III's army, marching north through Normandy and Picardy with a larger French army in pursuit, turned and fought at Crécy. English and Welsh longbowmen fired into charging French knights, and the hail of arrows broke the attack. Ten years later at Poitiers the army of the Black Prince, Edward's son, took the French king John II prisoner.

France recovered under Charles V, whose general Bertrand du Guesclin avoided battle and retook most of the lost land by the 1370s. The war flickered on with truces, a madness that struck the French king Charles VI, and a civil war in France between the Burgundians and Armagnacs. In 1415 a new English king saw his chance.

Harfleur and the long march

Henry V landed near Harfleur in August 1415 with an army of perhaps 12,000. The siege took five weeks, and dysentery killed many men and sent many more home sick. In October, with a much smaller force, Henry marched toward Calais, found the Somme crossings guarded, and had to detour far inland.

On 24 October a large French army blocked his road near the village of Azincourt. The chronicler Monstrelet, writing a generation later, reckoned they outnumbered the English by more than six to one. Modern estimates vary widely: Anne Curry, working from pay records, suggests about 9,000 English against 12,000 French, while Juliet Barker and others argue for about 6,000 English, outnumbered perhaps four to one. All agree the French had more men.

Mud and arrows

The armies faced each other across a narrow field between two woods, on ploughed land softened by heavy rain. Henry's archers, probably placed on the wings, planted sharpened stakes in the ground. When the French cavalry charged, the stakes and arrows turned it back, and the fleeing horses crashed into the men-at-arms behind. French men-at-arms, packed so tightly they could hardly swing their weapons, floundered in the mud, and the English cut them down with swords, axes and mallets.

Late in the battle, when news came of an attack on the English baggage and the French seemed to be massing again, Henry ordered his men to kill their prisoners. English chroniclers say he feared being overwhelmed. Some historians see a ruthless but understandable decision; others think it broke the customs of war even by the standards of the day. The French dead included the constable, the dukes of Alençon, Bar and Brabant, and hundreds of nobles.

Troyes and the dual monarchy

Henry went back to conquer France. In 1420 the Treaty of Troyes made him heir to the mad Charles VI, disinheriting Charles's son the Dauphin, and Henry married Charles's daughter Catherine. Then, in August 1422, Henry died at 35, probably of dysentery, and Charles followed him seven weeks later.

His baby son Henry VI was proclaimed king of both countries. England and its Burgundian allies held Paris and the north, but the Dauphin refused to accept his disinheritance, and the war was far from over. In 1429 it would be transformed by a farm girl from the borders of Lorraine.

In their own words

“When these battalions were all drawn up, it was a grand sight to view; and they were, on a hasty survey, estimated to be more than six times the number of the English.”

Enguerrand de Monstrelet, Chronicles, Book 1, chapter 146, on the battle of Agincourt, c. 1440s

Translation by Thomas Johnes (first published 1809–10). Monstrelet was a chronicler in Burgundian service who wrote a generation after the battle; his ratio is far higher than any modern estimate.

Why it happened

• The Capetian line ended in 1328, leaving two claimants to the French throne.
• English kings held Gascony from the French crown, a dispute over homage and sovereignty.
• France was divided in the 1400s between the Burgundian and Armagnac factions, which gave Henry V his chance.

What happened next

• Henry V's victory brought him a French crown by treaty, but it did not hold.
• The Dauphin's cause was revived by a young visionary in 1429. Read the story →
• English and British kings kept the title king of France until 1801.

Why it still matters

The words “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers” are Shakespeare's, written around 1599 for his play Henry V, not Henry's own. In 1944 Laurence Olivier filmed the play as wartime propaganda, with government backing, and released it months after D-Day; the St Crispin's Day speech still turns up in speeches by generals and politicians.

Connected stories

• The Black Death: The plague arrived in the middle of the war; heavier taxes and labour shortages in both kingdoms followed.
• Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of Two Kingdoms: English claims in France date back to the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry II in 1152.
• Joan of Arc: After Agincourt and Troyes, the Dauphin's cause looked lost, until Joan of Arc appeared in 1429.
• 1066: The Norman Conquest: English kings held land in France ever since William's conquest tied England to Normandy.

Sources

• The Chronicles of Enguerrand de Monstrelet, translated by Thomas Johnes (1810)
• Jonathan Sumption, The Hundred Years War, vol. IV: Cursed Kings (2015)
• Juliet Barker, Agincourt: The King, the Campaign, the Battle (2005)
• Anne Curry, Agincourt: A New History (2005)

Images are credited under each picture. Paintings and photographs come from public collections via Wikimedia Commons; scenes with no surviving image are marked as illustrations.