On 24 October, he saw them; they were gathered, according to the author of The Deeds of Henry V, like a swarm of locusts near the village of Agincourt. One of the English commanders prayed aloud for 10,000 more archers, but the king told him that they had the more certain protection of God. He rested his men that night, and ordained a strict silence; the songs and music of the French could clearly be heard. At dawn he attended three Masses before mounting his horse; he wore a gold crown upon his helmet. Then he ordered his army into position. He had approximately 8,000 men against a French army of 20,000. Another crucial difference was in place; the English combatants included 6,000 archers or longbowmen, while the French had very few. They were relying upon the force of their armour. So the English were placed in a thin line across the field of battle, in the same posture as the shield wall of the Anglo-Saxons or ‘the thin red line’ at the battle of Balaclava in 1854. The heavy rain of the previous night had rendered the terrain muddy and treacherous. For three hours, from nine in the morning to midday, the two armies faced each other without moving.
Henry then took the initiative, fearing that the enemy were waiting for reinforcements. ‘Now is good time, for all England prays for us,’ he shouted, ‘and therefore be of good cheer, and let us go to our journey!’ He continued with an invocation. ‘In the name of Almighty God and St George, advance bannerer! And St George, this day your help!’ His soldiers prostrated themselves upon the ground, each of them putting a small piece of earth into his mouth to remind him that he was mortal and must one day return to dust; it was a different form of holy communion. The English archers advanced some 700 yards (640 metres), stopped, and rammed sharp pointed stakes into the soft earth as a form of protection from horses and armed knights alike. Then they took aim and fired at the massed French host with a great storm of arrows, causing immediate carnage in its ranks. The French cavalry charged, but the men and horses were wounded or impaled upon the stakes.
The body of the French army moved forward, but their great numbers made them unwieldy and confused. The arrows of the English archers continued to do their deadly work, and the riderless horses created further alarm among the men. The bodies of the dead already lay in piles upon the muddy ground, and the more nimble English soldiers were able to turn in upon the groaning mass of the enemy. Two-thirds of the remaining French army now fled. Henry was not yet certain of the victory; a third part of the army still remained on the field, and many unarmed French prisoners were held in the rear of the action. He ordered these men to be put to death, to avoid any threatening movement on their part. This was in defiance of the rules of chivalry, which forbade the execution of unarmed prisoners, and was also to the detriment of the English who could have been expected to earn sizeable ransoms from their captives. Yet Henry ordered 200 archers to carry out the work of killing. It can only be said that in the blood and heat of battle some pressing reason must have suggested itself to him. What that was, we do not know. His command was not wholly carried out, however, and many hundreds of noble prisoners survived the ordeal of the battle of Agincourt.
The king now marched unimpeded to Calais from where, after a few days’ respite, he sailed back to England. His reception in London on 23 November was a great occasion of state. 20,000 citizens met him at Blackheath, where he was hailed as ‘lord of England, flower of the world, soldier of Christ’. Two giant figures, of a man and a woman, were erected on London Bridge to welcome him; effigies of the lion and the antelope wearing the royal arms, with a choir of angels singing ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the lord’, greeted his progress. Other giant figures, and pageant wagons, and fanciful castles, decorated the route to St Paul’s Cathedral; the king, in a simple gown of purple, was greeted by groups of singers holding garlands. In this year, also, Henry began to wear an arched or imperial crown modelled upon that worn by the Holy Roman Emperor; it was an ‘imperial diadem of gold and precious stones’, adverting to the fact that he had regained an imperial kingship.
