The Battle of Agincourt

This was for my assignment to make an illustrated report an a event in medieval history. I've always wanted to try a historical MOC, let me know what you think.

 

 

In the year 1415 AD, the twenty-eight year old Henry the Fifth of England set out to reclaim captured English land from the French. He set sail with a force of roughly five thousand, five hundred longbow men and eleven hundred foot soldiers. After a voyage Southward, he landed on the French coast and took the French port of Harfleur. After marching several more miles inland on his conquest, he decided to turn around and head home for England. But when they arrived near a small French village called Agincourt, he found an angry French army of about twenty two thousand Knights, foot soldiers, and crossbowmen in their path. Henry, now turned to desperate survival, prepared his forces to make a desperate stand against the French army. The following day, the French began their assault to crush the small English invading army as a man crushes a mosquito on his arm. However, a mistake was made. The original French commander, an expert tactician, was replaced by another man, who altered the plan, and, instead of sending a small part of the army to drive into the English lines, ordered the entire army at once to charge across the narrow elevated plain covered in thick mud. As the French forces thundered towards the English archers, the raised plain began to grow narrower, crowding the French horsemen together and even causing some to fall. Once they fell and were entrenched in the stick mud, they tripped up many of their companions accidentally, slowing the advance. French knights toppled and piled up, their horses screaming. But the charge, though weakened, continued, and the English hired soldiers let loose a great hail of deadly bodkin arrows from their powerful longbows, the ultimate weapon of the time. The arrows, however, were met by the thick French armor, but the knights’ weakness lay in their unprotected steeds. The arrows slaughtered the unarmored horses, sending their riders tumbling to the thick mud and causing a massive clog, which slowed the men behind them immensely. When the knights attempted to arise and run on foot the remaining distance to the English lines, the heavy mud became bonds to their plate armor, trapping them in place while the English archers, clad in cloth and leather clothes and armor, surged forward like a great wave, and, drawing axes, daggers, and hammers, made short work of the floundering French. But the day was not yet won, for behind the charge of knights marched a vast company of footmen, drawing cruel blades and tramping over the broken, bloody, bodies of their companions. But the English still had an advantage: While they fought desperately for survival, the French hoped to take important prisoners captive and hold them for ransom, earning large sums of money. When they were met not with knights of nobility but simple archers, who were thought to be worthless, they were unsure of their course, and the hesitation, combined with the hazard of the piles of bodies and thick mud, allowed the English archers and foot soldiers to slay many of them. The furious fight lasted for two hours, and when it had drawn to a close, thousands of Frenchmen lay dead, while very few English had been slain. A large number of French foot soldiers remained alive, however, and the English soldiers took them captive, hoping to earn money by way of ransom. But the young commander King Henry, surprised by his victory, was still unsure of whether the hundreds of captive Frenchmen might suddenly turn on the exhausted English and slay them. Thus, he ordered all the prisoners put to death. The battle was over, and King Henry returned safely to England.

 

 

Done