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Not 1066 again! Should we ditch our obsession with dates?
From 1066 to 1918, our obsession with battles, elections and even voyages of discovery risks distorting a true understanding of the past
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That, at least, is what the famous rhyme tells us. Memorising such dates is a common experience of being taught history – a cliché superbly lampooned by the witty 1930 book 1066 and All That. “History is not what you thought,” its preface suggested. “It is what you can remember.” Accordingly, as per its subtitle, it offered a “Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates.” Conspicuously, though, “two out of the four dates originally included were eliminated at the last moment” because “they are not memorable.” Though evidently both humorists, the book’s authors – Punch writers WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman – were making a serious point. History has long been thought to be concerned with preserving the past. The 12th-century historian and Byzantine princess Anna Komnene observed how “time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity”. Her solution was the study of history, which “forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time”. This is a powerful idea – one that perhaps moved King Charles I, moments before his execution in January 1649, to utter a last single word to William Juxon, the former bishop of London, instructing him: “Remember.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/1066-and-all-that-later-edition-CMYKWeb-Ready-dfb5326.jpg" width="2295" height="1530" alt="The cover of a book, with the title 1066 And All That across the top, and two men standing side by side in green and pink clothing" title="The 1930 book 1066 and All That wittily parodied the conventional approach to teaching history in schools at that time (Image by Amazon)" /> But do our efforts to remember really require us to do something so trivial as memorising dates? More radically, do the historical events these dates mark even matter? The Oxford English Dictionary leaves little room for doubt. Its definition of an event is “something that happens or takes place, especially something significant or noteworthy”. History is often taught as a succinct sequence of such occurrences – those accepted as important moments, neatly knitted together to explain the present. Indeed, for many historians, especially those preoccupied with political, constitutional or military matters, the practice of history itself involves assessing the importance of events by examining their causes, contexts and consequences, considering how they represent change or continuity over time. Yet almost no archaeologist would approach the past in such terms. Nor would many of today’s social, economic or cultural historians. In the 20th century, proponents of the Annales school, named for a scholarly journal, famously considered events relatively insignificant. French historian Fernand Braudel (1902–85) argued that events were simply “surface disturbances, crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs”. Has the importance given to events been overstated? Should we, therefore, put less emphasis on learning dates? Are there better ways of understanding history? The first issue to consider is just how ‘important’ dates are selected. If we are told that some day or year is more noteworthy than another, who decided this? It would be appealing to be able to say that the established chronology has been objectively selected by balanced, skilled historians, and arrived at through years of scrupulous scholarship and vigorous debate. Yet history is a human thing, written and argued over for all kinds of reasons. Even if such matters are really decided by historians – instead of, say, politicians or poets – we are all equally flawed, prone to error and liable to misinterpret the past through a panoply of biases, conscious or not. Moreover, humans are social animals and have consequently evolved to value convention, tradition and the received wisdom of our ancestors. Most of us simply accept the established chronology. Such a shared history can indeed function as a powerful bond cementing the otherwise disparate identities of social groups. To reinforce this sense of the collective, past incidents thought worthy of remembrance were once upon a time written in stone – literally. The Parian Marble, a fragment of a stele found on the island of Paros and now displayed in the ancient Greek section of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, is inscribed with a neat chronology of events and their dates from 1582 BC to 299 BC in our terms. These include the fall of Troy, purportedly in 1209–1208 BC, and the rather more reliably dated battle of Marathon in 490 BC. The stele’s text, similar to the earlier ‘Sumerian King List’ housed in the nearby Mesopotamian gallery, fuses myth with history. Such objects represent early examples of a phenomenon that has become increasingly common in the past two centuries or so. With the rise of nation states, backstories have been created for their “imagined communities”, as Anglo-Irish political scientist Benedict Anderson famously dubbed nations in 1983. These stories typically rest on simple historical narratives, ideally sprinkled with a few inspirational national heroes and some key dates. In the UK, a chronology of past rulers plays a major role. Reigns became surrogates for eras, suffused with each ruler’s character. Looking back, for example, we see all those who were alive between 1837 and 1901 as ‘Victorians’. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-815264642cmykWeb-Ready-2ce7a55.jpg" width="3569" height="2379" alt="A 2017 re-enactment of the 1410 battle of Grunwald. Poles and Lithuanians see this victory over the German Teutonic Order as a turning point in their national stories (Image by Getty Images)" title="A 2017 re-enactment of the 1410 battle of Grunwald. Poles and Lithuanians see this victory over the German Teutonic Order as a turning point in their national stories (Image by Getty Images)" /> Battles are often key parts of national stories. Like Marathon for the ancient Greeks, the battles of Hastings in 1066 and Agincourt in 1415 are considered important to the English. For the British more generally, Trafalgar in 1805 and Waterloo in 1815 are significant. In Serbia, the notoriously bloody battle of Kosovo in 1389, in which forces led by Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović squared up to an invading Ottoman army under the command of Sultan Murad I, has been endlessly mythologised. Lithuanians and Poles still celebrate victory over the German Teutonic Order at the battle of Grunwald in 1410. But few dates and events are as significant as national narratives suggest, battles least of all. Why? Because battles, though certainly rare and dramatic moments, are seldom, if ever, decisive at ending wars so can’t be imbued with much causal importance. Even after Hastings, at which much of the English ruling class was killed, it took William the Conqueror many years to bring England truly under Norman rule, a period notorious for the so-called Harrying of the North (1069–70). Likewise, the greatly celebrated clash at Agincourt (1415), which owes much of its fame to William Shakespeare, saw the mass slaughter of French nobility – but it was not until 1420 that Henry V forced Charles VI to agree to recognise the Plantagenet claim to the French throne under the Treaty of Troyes. Read more | Do you know the correct date of Magna Carta? Here’s why you might be wrong Yet such totemic dates are repeatedly reinforced by that staple of public history and national myth-making: the commemoration of anniversaries. These appear to be good moments to reconsider the past and revive enthusiasm for historical enquiry, but there’s a built-in problem: at least outwardly, nobody involved questions the real significance of the events marked – that would defeat the exercise. It is understandable that, on occasion, people wish to memorialise the loss of their loved ones in wars or other disasters. In general, however, anniversaries reflect current concerns and as such are profoundly unhelpful when it comes to understanding what happened in the past. Admittedly, some moments appear to have been so overwhelmingly important that they demand our attention. For Europe, the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 seems epochal. In China, the final defeat of the Song dynasty by the forces of Kublai Khan in 1279 has a similar significance. Yet these events represent the culmination of long and complex processes. Seen in this light, the events themselves were largely symbolic. Surely, you say, the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas in 1492 had massive historical consequences. Well, one can quibble over whether his first voyage itself achieved much – likewise his three further transatlantic expeditions in 1493–96, 1498–1500 and 1502–04, for that matter – despite being catastrophic for the indigenous Taíno people of the Caribbean. Columbus thought – and continued to think for the rest of his life – that he was exploring east Asia. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-599969077cmykWeb-Ready-7d51147.jpg" width="4272" height="2848" alt="A painting of a man dressed in a white shirt with a brown cloak, and a dark hat" title="This 1519 portrait reputedly depicts Christopher Columbus. Did his first transatlantic voyage in 1492 really have such world-changing consequences? (Image by Getty Images)" /> The world indeed changed thereafter as it gradually fused into what, in 1974, the American economic historian and sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein termed the “modern world-system”, but this was not an inevitable consequence of Columbus’s first voyage. After all, Europeans had been in the Americas before. The Norseman Leif Erikson is thought to have reached North America around AD 1000, and a Norse settlement excavated at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada seems to support this. So it is of far greater historical significance that pivotal processes occurred after 1492 – but not after 1000. This is a point made in Alfred W Crosby’s groundbreaking 1972 book The Columbian Exchange, a foundational text of environmental history that charted the seismic global effects of the intercontinental transfer of plants, animals, diseases and cultures. Such developments can be shown to be genuinely transformative to people’s lives, from the food they ate to the diseases that afflicted them. By contrast, traditional chronology often neglects the experiences of a broad spectrum of people. Not everyone was present at battles or on voyages of discovery. Indeed, most humans who have ever lived were peasants who wrested their subsistence from the soil. For these people, few experiences were shared beyond a restricted locality, especially in periods when speeds of travel were slow and communication limited. Nearly all people must have been ignorant of what we now assert, after the fact, were key events. Others would have been simply indifferent. According to the historian De Lamar Jennsen, the Spanish Armada – King Philip II of Spain’s unsuccessful project to invade England in summer 1588 – was the “worst kept secret in Europe”. Yet research suggests that, far from striving to achieve victory for their country in some epic national struggle, during the Armada many English sailors and merchants were more preoccupied with selling food and other supplies to the enemy than with fighting them. Perhaps the key problem is that narrative history gives us a false sense of order, in part by playing to our innate tendency to identify and interpret patterns. It suggests that big events necessarily have big consequences. This completely fails to account for the unpredictable nature of the world through which we move. Seemingly insignificant factors can and do have a disproportionate impact on history. As the proverb has it in James Baldwin’s version: “For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for the want of a horse the battle was lost; for the failure of battle the kingdom was lost; and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.” Conversely, apparently important things can turn out to be irrelevant. To return to Columbus, how are we to frame the decision of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon to support him, having equivocated for years over whether to stump up the cash to fund his voyage west? Some cite the fall of Granada to Christian forces in January 1492 – marking the end of Islamic rule on the Iberian peninsula, which gave the co-ruler monarchs both confidence and the promise of more secure finances – as the key explanation for their change of heart. Assuming this were true, we could equally portray what happened as the result of the Arab Nasrid dynasty, which ruled the Emirate of Granada for more than 250 years, carelessly losing control of their territory. In the latter reading, Wallerstein’s modern world-system was in a sense created “for want of a nail”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-128261385cmykWeb-Ready-6731e0e.jpg" width="3941" height="2628" alt="A photograph of a courtyard under tall, intricate archways with several columns throughout" title="The Court of the Lions in the Alhambra, Granada. That city’s fall in January 1492 arguably led to the European colonisation of the Americas. But it’s an episode that can be framed in different ways, argues Robert Blackmore (Image by Getty Images)" /> As should be becoming clear, questioning the assumptions that underpin so much conventional narrative history has serious implications. This forces you, for example, to recognise that the lowliest peasant may have been as significant as an emperor or king, and that their relative impact on history was not necessarily proportionate to their immediate influence. “The ruler’s power was rarely effective,” Danish historian Patricia Crone put it, “even within such sphere of competence as he did enjoy.” Braudel hauntingly evoked a “historian who takes a seat in Philip II’s chair and reads his papers” and is transported into “a world of strong passions” but one “unconscious of the deeper realities of history, of the running waters on which our frail barks are tossed like cockleshells”. Yet such is our wish to impose order on a complex world that we have frequently reached for elaborate explanations for erratic ‘nonlinear’ outcomes, among them the capricious will of deities, the movements of celestial bodies, even conspiracy theories. In truth, because our evidence of the past is so incomplete, we are unlikely ever to pinpoint true cause and effect. Despite this, we still tend to look for what Annales school historian Marc Bloch called “the idol of origins”. Countless books claim to trace the roots of anything from states and religions to sports. Even the aforesaid Parian Marble located the birth of agriculture to 1409–08 BC when the goddess Demeter supposedly invented grain crops. In practical terms, though, nothing has any origin in history. “For most historical realities,” Bloch wrote in the early 1940s, “the very notion of a starting point remains singularly elusive.” As we have shown, we cannot even be sure that the origin of the Columbian Exchange was Columbus himself. Read more | A thousand years ago, the Vikings had a shock encounter with Native Americans that ended in disaster Indeed, trying to frame this story, we could be more radical and go back even before the time of Leif Erikson – perhaps all the way back to 14,800 years ago, when the Bering Strait Land Bridge was last rendered impassable and Asia was fully separated from the Americas. But where do you stop? Rather than there being actual origins, all things were and are constantly in the course of being made through a process of emergence. As Bloch argued, “A historical phenomenon can never be understood apart from its moment in time. This is true of every evolutionary stage, our own and all others.” So how, then, are we to approach history without straightforward narratives? There are any number of options. Some historians, such as those of the Annales school, have examined historical structures – social, political and economic – rather than events to explain change, frequently over the long term. This approach has often been fused with the so-called histoire des mentalités (history of attitudes), which endeavours to understand the perspectives of those in the past in their own terms. Meanwhile, some social and economic historians have used Marxist theory and framed conflict between social classes as explaining change. Others have put the emphasis on demography and land use. Today, in a time of climate change, many historians are interested in understanding past societies’ interactions with their environments. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-122317088cmykWeb-Ready-15b2d1a.jpg" width="3708" height="2472" alt="An image showing four people dressed in wool skins and carrying spears, walking across a large" title="An illustration depicts Asian hunters migrating across the Bering Strait Land Bridge. The strait becoming impassable some 15,000 years ago was a vital juncture in global history (Image by Getty Images)" /> Each new approach has inevitably attracted criticism for its own alleged oversimplification and misrepresentation of the past. British historians, in particular, were notoriously hostile to the Annales school. Geoffrey Elton of the University of Cambridge, for example, held to his focus on events, with disdain for nearly all scholarship outside the study of power politics. It is said that his colleague Maurice Cowling would privately exclaim: “Annales is balls!” Despite such intransigence, though, new ideas did spread. Going forward, future historians will doubtless find even more innovative forms of historical enquiry using formidable artificial intelligence-driven tools. Read more | Do you know all the major periods in British history? To be clear, though they make less of specific events, new approaches are not necessarily histories without dates. Peter Laslett, in his pioneering 1965 work of social history The World We Have Lost, even began with one: “In the year 1619 the bakers of London applied to the authorities for an increase in the price of bread.” Though Laslett pinpoints a moment that might seem banal when compared with a great battle, coronation or discovery, we should arguably accord such granular details equal attention for what they tell us of our ancestors’ priorities. Their world, like our own, was a practically infinite morass of events and dates whose relative importance and interrelationships were vastly more uncertain than we impulsively suppose. History is not, as one student in Alan Bennett’s 2004 play The History Boys put it, “just one f****** thing after another”. Rather, as the sixth-century historian and bishop Gregory of Tours began his Historia Francorum (History of the Franks), “A great many things keep happening.” Faced with this truth, should we not stop presenting history as neat, ordered and, as such, unrepresentative of how our forebears experienced it? Ultimately, we cannot preserve the past inside the present. Explorers such as Columbus and rulers such as Charles I or Philip II will eventually be forgotten, just as we will all one day be swept away by the stream of time. Trying to understand this process, not learning dates, is the true art of history. Kings and queens are not innately important; neither are great battles. All things are transient. As the 11–12th-century Persian poet and scientist Omar Khayyam put it, it is far better we “think, in this batter’d caravanserai [a refuge for travellers] whose doorways are alternate night and day; how sultan after sultan with his pomp, abode his hour or two, and went his way”. This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
The bloody rise of Henry V: how his brutal upbringing propelled him to greatness
Held hostage at 12. Deciding the fate of captives at 14. Maimed in battle at 16. The future King Henry V learned a series of violent but valuable leadership lessons during his youth. Dan Jones traces the evolution of ‘Prince Hal’ into one of medieval England's most revered warrior monarchs and the victor of Agincourt
Summer 1403 saw surgeon John Bradmore rush to Kenilworth Castle to attend to a famous patient. Henry, the 16-year-old Prince of Wales and heir to the English throne, was in a critical condition. On 21 July, he had fought alongside his father, King Henry IV, at the battle of Shrewsbury against rebels led by Henry ‘Hotspur’ Percy. The royal army had won – but the cost of victory had been high. During the battle, an arrow had pierced Prince Henry’s cheek and lodged deep in his head. He’d been lucky to survive; without urgent medical attention, he would surely soon die. The procedure Bradmore performed at Kenilworth was a marvel of surgical ingenuity. Over the course of several weeks, the medic widened the entry wound, all the while keeping it clean and free from infection. When the hole in Henry’s face was wide enough, Bradmore used a tool of his own devising to grip and slowly remove the metal arrowhead. Miraculously, during this entire process, the prince hadn’t gone into toxic shock. Bradmore then closed and sewed up the wound. He’d saved Henry’s life. Read more | Why is Henry V's portrait in profile? The operation had been complex and daring. It was also profoundly important for the dynastic history of England, the political history of Britain, and the military history of western Europe. What kind of king was Henry V? In 1413, a decade after Bradmore extracted that arrowhead, his patient succeeded to the English throne as King Henry V. Two years later, he was victorious at the battle of Agincourt. He was the king who realised the Plantagenet claim to the crown of France. He dragged England out of the dire condition into which it had sunk during the tyrannical reign of Richard II and the fractious one of his own father. He dispensed justice and defended traditional religion. He used the English language as a tool to bind his subjects as a nation. And he projected a stern, unyielding, ultra-pious public image; indeed, one observer thought him more like a priest than a soldier. Henry V was not the sort of fellow we would choose to govern us today. In recent years, some historians have depicted him as a brutal, stiff-necked prig. But his contemporaries revered and respected him, recognising that – as a medieval monarch – Henry ticked every box. He ruled for only nine years and five months, but he was England’s most accomplished king of the Middle Ages. Read more | Alternate history: what if Henry V hadn't died in 1422? Clearly, the surgery that saved Henry after the battle of Shrewsbury was a sliding doors moment in history – but it was far from the only event in his youth that shaped him and, by extension, the realm he ruled. As William Shakespeare recognised, to understand Henry V we must study his experiences as young ‘Prince Hal’ – beginning with his birth above the gatehouse of Monmouth Castle at 11.22am (reputedly) on 16 September 1386, during the reign of his cousin Richard II. How important was Richard II to Henry V? “My God! This is a strange and fickle land, which has exiled, slain, destroyed or ruined so many kings… and which is always tainted and toils with strife and variance and envy!” These words, quoted by the chronicler Adam of Usk, were spoken by Richard II in 1399. He was then in the Tower of London, waiting to be deposed and replaced by Henry Bolingbroke – the future Henry IV. Richard was no one’s idea of a brilliant king – other than, perhaps, his own. He had spent most of his 22-year reign picking fights with his nobles, ignoring good advice and tyrannisin g his subjects. Yet his influence on the young Henry was powerful, and threefold. In the first place, Richard had been kind and generous to Henry. When Henry was a boy, one near-contemporary claimed, Richard was fond of telling his courtiers of a prophecy that the lad would one day become king. That prophecy, perhaps just a bit of fun to begin with, looked much more likely after 1398. On 16 September of that year – Henry’s 12th birthday – Richard sentenced the boy’s father, Bolingbroke, to 10 years in exile following an aborted duel with the Duke of Norfolk. This had its roots in a rebellion against Richard a decade earlier. But it was also the first step towards Richard confiscating the vast duchy of Lancaster, to which Bolingbroke was the heir. Young Henry did not follow his father into exile. Instead, Richard took him to Ireland on military campaign, effectively held hostage to ensure his father’s good behaviour. During this time, though, Richard treated Henry well, even honourably. He knighted the young lad, and praised his “valiant blood”. Even when Bolingbroke invaded England to claim back his inheritance, Richard did not penalise Henry for his father’s deeds. True, when Richard sailed back to England to try to secure his crown, he locked his young charge in Trim Castle, north-west of Dublin. But no harm came to Henry there and, from what we can tell, the young man appreciated this point and carried a respectful memory of Richard into his later life. Indeed, one of Henry’s early acts as king was to visit Kings Langley in Hertfordshire, where Richard had been buried after he was murdered in 1400. Henry ordered that the king’s corpse be exhumed, transported with extraordinary dignity and reburied in the tomb Richard had designed for himself in Westminster Abbey. Read more | Why are British monarchs traditionally crowned in Westminster Abbey? Yet Henry gleaned more from watching his captor than simple human empathy. Richard provided an invaluable counter-example of kingship: he showed exactly how not to do the job. Richard was partisan; Henry exercised impartial justice. Richard was allergic to taking good counsel; Henry put consultation with his realm through parliament at the heart of his kingship. Where Richard was inclined towards pro-French pacifism – never a popular stance during the Hundred Years’ War – Henry was blisteringly aggressive. The final part of Richard’s legacy to Henry is the most overlooked. Richard had a rare instinct for the performance of majesty that Henry reflected, consciously or unconsciously. The famous Westminster Portrait of Richard captures how he appeared to his courtiers: aloof, terrible and apart. Henry paid tribute to this at his own coronation in 1413. Observers noticed a transformation come over him, so that all hint of levity left him and his manner henceforth became all “gravity and discretion”. Richard loved to perform majesty, and rarely missed an opportunity to do so. Henry thought just as hard about presenting a striking image of what kingship resembled. After his military victories at Harfleur and Agincourt in 1415, he appeared at a triumph in London looking sombre and severe, refusing to celebrate his own achievement but giving all thanks to God. Henry’s vision of kingship was austere and pious, whereas Richard’s was flamboyant and self-serving – but they both knew precisely what they wanted their subjects to see. When did Henry V get his first lessons about warfare? If Richard shaped Henry’s understanding of how to ‘perform’ kingship, the boy’s father gave him an unusually good apprenticeship in the military and political business of ruling England. Henry was just 13 when he was created Prince of Wales, straight away becoming actively involved in public affairs and, above all, in warfare. This vocational training began in 1400, when his father took him on an expedition to Scotland. This mission was not a success, and the Scots ran rings around Henry IV’s army. Nevertheless, it gave Prince Henry the chance to see for the first time the immense logistical operation that a military excursion demanded: the tons of flour, salt, wine, beans, fish, cheese and bacon needed to feed the men; the crates of arrows, crossbow bolts, axes, lances, guns and spare pieces of armour required to equip the army; and the transport and support ships involved, sporting such pious names as Trinity of the Tower and Holy Ghost. From that point onwards, barely a year of Henry’s youth did not involve some form of warmongering. His main training ground was his principality of Wales, where his father gave him a leading role in the struggle to contain the rebellion of Owain Glyndŵr. That insurrection, which began in 1400 and rumbled on for more than a decade, was a hands-on education covering many aspects of warfare in which Henry would prove a master when he joined the fray of the Hundred Years’ War. In Wales there were castles to be besieged, including the vast fortresses at Harlech, Conwy and Aberystwyth. There were archers and men-at-arms to deploy, and new weapons to play with, including rapidly improving cannons. The prince had to enforce discipline among his own troops and strike fear into the hearts of his enemies. The first time captives were executed on his command was during the siege of Conwy Castle, when Henry was just 14 years old. Perhaps most vital of all, he had to negotiate constantly with his father’s treasury and with English parliaments to cadge every penny of war funding he could secure in order to keep his soldiers paid. This was never easy. Apprentice princes: 3 other royal heirs who learned the family trade Richard I Richard the Lionheart was 31 when he succeeded his father, Henry II, in 1189. By then he was one of the most experienced knights and generals in Europe, and had already established a tempestuous relationship with the French king, Philip II Augustus. On inheriting the throne, Richard had a single obsession: he wished to direct all of the resources of the Plantagenet empire towards the fight against Saladin on the Third Crusade. Richard proved to be a famous crusader, but his war – and the vast ransom paid for his release following capture by Duke Leopold of Austria on his way home from the Holy Land – nearly bankrupted his realm. Edward I When Edward was a young man, England was engulfed by a vicious civil war between his father, Henry III, and reformers led by Simon de Montfort. Edward was captured at the battle of Lewes in 1264, but escaped – and took bloody revenge on de Montfort at the battle of Evesham the next year. Edward then travelled to the Holy Land, where he narrowly escaped assassination. When he became king in 1272, at the age of 33, he was hardened by experience to become one of the fiercest warriors in medieval history. Henry VI Ironically, the English monarch with perhaps the worst apprenticeship was Henry V’s son, who became king of England – and, theoretically, of France – in 1422, before his first birthday. Compelled to learn every aspect of kingship ‘on the job’, Henry VI shrank from the task. He was dominated by his relatives and ministers, and had no appetite at all for warfare. His mental health collapsed in the 1450s, and the Wars of the Roses erupted as his reign spiralled into chaos. Read more | Why Henry VI’s reign was such a disaster How did Henry V take to combat? Henry clearly had a taste for combat from a young age. In a letter he wrote in May 1403, when the prince was 16, he related with proud glee how he had reacted to reports that Glyndŵr was looking to pick a fight. “We took our men and went to [Glyndŵr’s] principal house named Sycharth, where we supposed to find him if he wished to fight in the manner he said,” Henry recalled. On arrival, however, “we found no man, and so we set fire to the whole place and several other houses of his tenants around”. Captives were beheaded. The countryside was burned. This was the way of war in the early 15th century, and the young prince didn’t shy away from the brutal reality. When he became king and set his sights on the French crown, this enthusiasm for hyper-aggressive warfare – along with the practical lessons Henry had earlier learned about fighting and financing campaigns – stood him in excellent stead. Read more | 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about Henry V and the battle of Agincourt Even his near-death experience at Shrewsbury was a learning moment of sorts: he had commanded a division in battle and been badly injured but survived. It might be speculation, but surely not wild fantasy, to suggest that Henry may have concluded from this episode that God had saved him for a reason. Whether or not this was so, one thing was certain: by the time Henry V succeeded his father, he had undergone an unusually long and intense on-the-job training as a warrior king of the Plantagenet dynasty. Not since Edward I nearly 150 years earlier had any English king come to the throne so well versed in the arts of war. When he inherited his father’s crown, Henry V held many advantages besides experience. One of the most crucial was the fact that, unlike Bolingbroke, he did not usurp the throne – he inherited it. The crown was his by right of blood, not conquest – and he did not have kingmakers such as Henry Percy (the powerful magnate of north-east England who had helped the elder Henry depose Richard in 1399) demanding reward for helping him succeed. Was Shakespeare's Prince Hal accurate to the real Henry V? This natural privilege might have inclined some young princes towards a sense of lazy entitlement. Indeed, that is part of the popular image of ‘Prince Hal’. No aspect of Henry V’s career as prince is so well known as Shakespeare’s suggestion, cobbled together from various sources written after Henry’s death, that he had enjoyed a riotous youth, spending his time carousing in taverns with low company rather than attending to the serious matter of learning to govern. Shakespeare’s Hal is an entertaining, amusing dramatic portrait. It is, though, more or less the opposite of the truth, which is that Prince Henry spent far more time at work than at play. Read more | A wayward prince? King Henry V's misspent youth In 1405, Henry IV became seriously ill with ailments that have never been satisfactorily diagnosed. Contemporaries believed that he had leprosy; modern scholars think he may have suffered a series of strokes. Whatever the cause was, his health became progressively worse. As his father’s condition deteriorated, Prince Henry took on greater responsibility for overseeing government. During the crisis years in Wales, he threw himself into suppressing Glyndŵr’s rebellion. Subsequently he took a deep interest in the defence of Calais, at the time an English port. In 1410 and 1411 he was almost working as a prince regent, chairing a royal council whose decisions were made with full royal authority. In 1412, his father’s health improved and the king demoted Henry, transferring his favour to the prince’s brother Thomas, Duke of Clarence. But that proved to be only a brief dip in the grand scheme of Henry’s career. The legend of the idle ‘Prince Hal’ derives from a combination of oblique poetic references to his sexual habits as a prince and tenuous stories from later writers. One claimed that Henry enjoyed incognito street fighting, another that he kept low company until after his coronation, when he turfed out the bad influences. Read more | Henry V’s greatest victory (and it wasn't at the battle of Agincourt) None of these tales stand up well to scrutiny. There is sounder evidence for Henry’s brothers causing trouble in London’s taverns than there is for the future king doing so. Judging by Henry’s overall career as prince, he was so heavily immersed in war and government that it is hard to see when he would have found much time or energy for larking around. When Henry was crowned king of England amid blizzards on 9 April 1413, writers indeed detected a change in his personality as he strove physically to embody the heaviness of monarchy through a new piety and severity of expression. This act was, he seemed to think, an essential part of the theatre of his coronation. Underneath it all, however, there was little that Henry needed to change about himself. All of the hard work had been done in the 26 years that had led up to that fateful moment. Dan Jones is a historian, broadcaster and author of Henry V: The Astonishing Rise of England’s Greatest Warrior King (Apollo, 2024) This article was first published in the October 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Why Henry VI’s reign was such a disaster
King Henry VI fell foul of the French, his soldiers, his own advisors, and centuries of historians. Yet, writes Lauren Johnson, perhaps his greatest enemy was the revered warrior-king who is commonly lauded as one of England's greatest monarchs and left him the throne 600 years ago, his own father...
In Westminster Abbey, the tomb of Henry V is hard to miss. Towering above the mosaic-encrusted tomb of St Edward the Confessor and his royal successors, for centuries Henry’s final resting place was topped by a shield, helm and warhorse’s saddle. All are symbols of the martial glory of a man many still consider to be the best English king of the Middle Ages. Meanwhile, in the Lady Chapel behind, tucked away and noticed by almost no one, is a small wooden pew-end representing Henry V’s successor, and only child, Henry VI. Can anything more aptly demonstrate the reputations of this father and son? Henry V loomed over his offspring from the grave, and in his father’s shadow Henry VI grew up stunted, emotionally and politically. Read more | Henry V's reputation: 5 facts you might not know about the king's softer side On the 600th anniversary of his death, Henry V’s triumphs are still rehearsed in productions of the eponymous Shakespeare play. His appears to be the ultimate underdog success story. Eldest son of a Lancastrian usurper, Henry V united England to claim the French throne, overcame substantial odds to win the battle of Agincourt in 1415, and was rewarded at the Treaty of Troyes in 1420, where he was named heir to the French kingdom and married Princess Catherine of Valois. Revered as “the flower in his time of Christian chivalry”, he died on campaign, aged 35 in 1422, leaving a nine-month-old son who shortly after was proclaimed King Henry VI, of England and France. Henry VI’s life also gained Shakespeare’s attention, but in the three plays bearing his name he is an insubstantial figure with few lines, completely overshadowed by more dynamic characters, chief among them his queen, Margaret of Anjou. Where Henry V’s reign is a litany of triumphs, his son’s reads like a top trumps of failure: he lost the Hundred Years’ War and the Wars of the Roses, was twice imprisoned by his Yorkist rivals and died, almost certainly murdered, in the Tower of London shortly after his only child had been hacked to death in battle. But if we peer beyond the lustre of the father and misfortune of the son, a more complicated image emerges: there is much to praise in the character and priorities of Henry VI, and a good deal reprehensible in the actions of Henry V. Most damningly of all, many of the failings of Henry VI can be traced back to his father. Although Henry VI reaped a bitter harvest for his people, it was Henry V who sowed the seed. Read more | Why is Henry V's portrait in profile? Lover and fighter The defining difference between Henrys V and VI can be summed up in a single word: warfare. Henry V was first and foremost a soldier, witness to military campaigns from the time he was 11 and left with a disfiguring scar when struck in the face by an arrow in his first battle, aged 16. The primary focus of his energies was gaining the French throne by military force. Henry VI, by contrast, was an out and out pacifist. In the cause of peace, he chose his queen, sacrificed bellicose advisers and surrendered vital bargaining chips to the French. Although Henry VI was willing to don armour and ride to battle, he never once raised his sword against an enemy, and his first experience of military violence came in his 34th year, when he watched impotently as his leading supporters were butchered in the streets of St Albans. Henry V’s military activity provided common experience and a focus for loyalty with his peers and subjects. It made them, to quote Shakespeare, a “band of brothers”, winning Henry fame and his subjects glory. Read more | A wayward prince? King Henry V's misspent youth Henry VI was trained for warfare by a military veteran and kitted out with weapons and armour as a child. He even rode a courser (warhorse) from the age of three. Yet the only time he visited France was for his coronation as a 10-year-old. Military leadership was always deputised to a noble kinsman. Why, then, did the son not become a formidable military leader in the mould of the father? After all, the Hundred Years’ War was far from over. The answer is a question of nature but also, importantly, of nurture. Henry V was extraordinarily fortunate in his upbringing, and in many ways his formative years and ultimate monarchical successes mirror those of Henry VI’s Yorkist rival and successor, Edward IV. Both Henry V and Edward hailed from families with many sons. This meant they were expendable, and therefore benefited from being allowed to witness lordship and warfare first hand. By contrast, Henry VI was an only child in the utterly unprecedented position of governing two realms, as a baby. His life was so precious that it could not be endangered by proximity to war. Henry VI’s insecurity was exacerbated by biological factors beyond his control: despite marrying and producing illegitimate children, none of his Lancastrian uncles had legitimate offspring, which meant that until 1447 his closest heir was the 50-something Duke of Gloucester, and after that, his distant cousin Richard, Duke of York. If Henry died fighting in France, as his father had done, the Lancastrian line would die with him. Nonetheless, if Henry VI had really wished to lead an army, he could have done so. The teenage king Henry VIII insisted on riding to war early in his reign, despite lacking brothers or an heir. Indeed, more than once in the reign of Henry VI, preparations were made for him to cross the Channel in force before royal command was delegated elsewhere, and when the Lancastrian throne was threatened by internal rivals it would have greatly bolstered Henry’s cause if he had personally fought alongside his men. Henry V knew the power that the presence of the king in the field could hold. At Agincourt, the French noblemen were numerous but their king, Charles VI, was too mentally unwell to attend. By contrast, Henry V was, according to a contemporary English chronicler, “the first to charge the enemy… giving his men in his own person brave examples of daring as he scattered the enemy ranks with his ready axe”. Read more | Henry V’s greatest victory (and it wasn't Agincourt) Henry V’s dominant leadership was a major factor in English victory, but there was a dark side to warfare that never sat well with the pious Henry VI. He never forgot that his father’s “glorious” French wars had unleashed suffering on both sides of the Channel. Indeed, by modern standards some of Henry V’s military choices rank as atrocities. After Agincourt, he ordered that prisoners of war be murdered. And it was not merely enemy combatants who suffered. Innocent women and children were starved to death during Henry V’s five-month siege of Rouen in 1418 and 1419. Even his direct contemporaries found some of the king’s actions excessive. An English eyewitness at Rouen described with pity: “A child of two years or three going about to beg its bread, [as] father and mother both were dead… And women holding in their arms dead children… and the children sucking in their pap within a dead woman’s lap.” Read more | Henry V: the cruel king Two years after Agincourt, another (anonymous) Englishman commemorated Henry’s victory in ambiguous terms: “Our England, therefore, has reason to rejoice and reason to grieve. Reason to rejoice [in] the victory gained and the deliverance of her men, reason to grieve for the suffering and destruction wrought in the deaths of Christians.” This was the true face of medieval war, and it was a reality that Henry VI could not stomach. In this, he was far from alone. By the time his father died, the English were sick of conflict, being already 85 years into the Hundred Years’ War. It was increasingly difficult to extract taxes to pay for military campaigns from a parliament that felt the war offered little advantage to Englishmen. The sheer scale of the bloodshed was starting to be questioned. By 1439 it was claimed that more men had died in the century of warfare than were alive now in both kingdoms. As a member of Henry VI’s council (or the king himself) observed: “So much Christian blood shed that it is [both] a sorrow and a horror to think or hear it.” In 1440, aged 18, Henry VI marked his accession to adult rule – which had been slowly proceeding since 1437 – with two statements of intent. He founded Eton College and shortly thereafter another at Cambridge, becoming the first king to create his own educational establishments. And he took the first step towards peace with France, defying his father’s last wishes by freeing the French prisoner of war, Charles, Duke of Orléans. Orléans had been pulled from a pile of corpses on the battlefield at Agincourt 25 years earlier – and his release had been expressly forbidden by Henry V. Flouting the late king’s will yet further, Henry VI suggested to one of his negotiators with France that in return for an alliance, he would surrender the French crown. Henry’s peace policy was so audacious that it divided public opinion and alienated his closest advisors. His uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, declared it was “the greatest sign of infamy that ever fell to [the king]… or to [his] noble progenitors”, and that he “would rather die” than accept it. Henry VI was at pains to emphasise that his new peace policy was the natural continuation of his ancestors’ wars. They, too, had ultimately negotiated peace – Henry V’s Treaty at Troyes was a case in point. But his subjects were not appeased. And worse was to follow. Ceding territory Henry VI was right that a grand gesture was required to end the Hundred Years’ War – but his judgment was poor on exactly what that gesture should be. Having freed Orléans, he then married the impoverished French noblewoman Margaret of Anjou to please her uncle, Charles VII of France, and ceded the hard-won territory of Maine in the process. He lost control of his disgruntled garrisons in France, giving the wily Charles VII justification for military vengeance. The result, ultimately, was the loss of all Henry’s French territories, including some that had been held by the kings of England for centuries. This was one of several instances in which Henry’s good intentions, but poor judgment, proved his undoing. He was honest to a fault, politically naïve, generous in the extreme. In a king, such virtues became vices. He failed to match his rivals for guile and was horrified by what he considered their treachery in abandoning alliances with England. In his own realm, Henry rewarded servants and overlooked wrongdoing in his supporters. When asked for favour, he invariably showed it, without considering the consequences. In the most notorious instance of his absent-minded liberality, he gave the same West Country title to two men at once, inciting a decades-long civil war. His constant desire was to avoid conflict. Where he had a choice between something right but difficult, or wrong but easy, he always chose the latter. On the podcast | Lauren Johnson discusses the life and reign of Henry VI, whose decades on the throne coincided with the disaster of the Wars of the Roses The cause of this character fault is to be found in his childhood. It had taken an extraordinary collective effort by the ruling elite of England to ensure Henry V’s son inherited England peacefully. There had been boy kings before – the last, Richard II, was crowned at the age of 10 half a century earlier. But there had never been a baby king of England. While who should rule was never in question, how they should rule was, and the resulting factionalism dividing Henry’s council was to blight his childhood. Henry VI had a superfluity of uncles and mentors, each with their own ideal of government. His great uncle, Archbishop (later Cardinal) Henry Beaufort, led a band of noblemen and bishops who favoured a royal council; his eldest uncle John, Duke of Bedford, sought to rule France and act as protector over a council in England; and his youngest surviving uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, craved the regency of England solely for himself. Read more | The miraculous afterlife of Henry VI These were powerful men, the wealthiest and most influential of the realm, and reconciling their conflicting demands would have been challenging for an adult king. It proved insurmountable for Henry. Time and again during his childhood he was called upon to witness public peace-making between his uncles, only for cohesion to collapse in private. Bedford was often abroad fighting Henry’s wars, leaving Cardinal Beaufort and the Duke of Gloucester to scrap things out between them: in parliament, palaces and even the streets of London, where tensions once escalated to such an extent that armed men faced off across London Bridge. Gloucester was the first to realise that Henry’s essentially pliable nature made him susceptible to coercion, and tried to motivate his nephew into assuming power early so he could rule through him. This led to a bewildering face-off between king and council, where the adolescent monarch was told, with all possible respect, that he simply wasn’t up to the job of ruling yet. The encounter compounded the sensitive Henry’s mistrust of his own judgment, encouraging his instinct to delegate authority to one leading courtier after another: first Gloucester, then the generally despised Duke of Suffolk, the unfortunate Duke of Somerset under whom France was lost, and eventually his queen, Margaret of Anjou. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2022/11/BAL3264578smlwebready-0054cef.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A miniature showing English troops attempting to storm a French camp outside Castillon in 1453. Their failure cost Henry VI the Hundred Years’ War (Photo by British Library Board)" title="A miniature showing English troops attempting to storm a French camp outside Castillon in 1453. Their failure cost Henry VI the Hundred Years’ War (Photo by British Library Board)" /> The fatal flaw But Henry V must share some of the blame for the problems of his son’s reign. In 1422, as he lay dying in France, physically wasted by camp sickness but still mentally acute, Henry V added codicils to his will that dictated how his successor should fight the French war. Those deathbed directions held his successor hostage for 20 years, leaving no room for his son and his advisors to manoeuvre, even as circumstances changed beyond the late king’s foresight. Had Henry V lived, he almost certainly would have adapted his policy, as Henry VI was forced to do. But leaving no latitude in his directions, Henry V effectively stymied Lancastrian government. Henry V’s decision to lead his armies in person at the sickness-ravaged siege of Meaux was also disastrous to his regime. It directly caused his death, and left his infant son without kingly example or paternal protection. This proved to be Henry VI’s fatal flaw. Because he never met his father – who departed to France during Queen Catherine’s pregnancy – Henry VI never witnessed kingship in action. He never even saw true leadership first hand, since those ruling on his behalf took pains to defer to him in public. His exempla were biblical figures and historical kings, but he never learned how to temper the ideals of kingship with the realpolitik of medieval rule. Read more | The miracle of Henry VI: how the weak medieval king became a 'saint' If Henry V had lived to have more sons, and to offer an example to his heir, things could have been different. He would have been beset by the same troubles as his son. Charles VII would have raised an army against him. Continental intrigues and English infighting would have bedevilled attempts at peace. The English treasury would have been drained to breaking point. Henry V was lucky, then, to die at the height of his powers, ensuring his lasting fame. Had Henry VI died in spring 1453, when his wife was pregnant, French lands being reclaimed, talk of a fresh invasion led by the king himself on the wind, and parliament pliable, we would remember him considerably more kindly. Instead, he died a prisoner of Edward IV, aged 49, shabby and bearded, teeth ground down by years of anxiety, having lost almost everyone he cared about – most of them violently. As William Shakespeare recognised, Henry V’s life story is a glorious history because of how it ended, just as Henry VI’s life was a tragedy. Lauren Johnson is a historian and writer. Her books include Shadow King: The Life and Death of Henry VI (Head of Zeus, 2019) This article was first published in the September 2022 issue of BBC History Magazine
Part nine in our 20-part series looking at decisive moments of the last 1,000 years in British history explores 1400–1449. Ralph Griffiths examines Henry V's successful victory over France which made him a winner in his own country too
The battle of Agincourt on 25 October 1415 was the climax of Henry V’s first invasion of France. The English victory was overwhelming, while Henry’s role in the fighting made his reputation as a military genius blessed by God. It was a turning-point in the king’s life and in his quest to be king of France as well as England. The year was also critical for his kingdom and its relationship with Wales, Scotland and Ireland, as well as for its European reputation, as preparations for the campaign brought to a head issues which influenced developments for long after. Soon after Henry became king in March 1413 at the age of 25, he began preparing for an invasion of France which he had advocated in his father’s reign. Preparations included securing the Welsh and Scottish borders and strengthening England’s military and naval capabilities. The king combined the self-confidence and ambition of youth with single-minded purpose and military experience gained in Wales against Owain Glyn Dwr. In 1414, Henry’s intentions became clearer and after Parliament met in November, MPs could report to their constituencies that he would soon be taxing his subjects and the Church and seeking loans to raise an army larger (at 12,000 combatants) than any since the Crécy campaign (1346) of his great-grandfather, Edward III, who had staked a claim to the French throne in 1340. Henry’s ultimate objective, and his obligation as Edward’s heir, was the French crown. More immediately and realistically, he tried to force territorial concessions from the elderly and insane French monarch, Charles VI, and his quarrelsome nobility: it was the best time to invade France. Henry and Charles exchanged ambassadors over many months, but the French could not agree to ever-increasing English demands. Meanwhile, Henry was planning to shock the French with his power. By mid-March 1415, Charles realised that invasion was coming and negotiations could only delay it. In April and May Henry proclaimed that “we, with God’s help, are about to go overseas to recover and regain the inheritances and just rights of our crown, which, as everyone agrees, have long been unjustly withheld”. At the same time, Henry’s enterprise put great strains on England, its men, money and loyalties, especially since he might be absent for as long as a year. These strains showed themselves during 1414–15; the way in which they were managed helped to ensure astonishing successes for the English which continued even after the king’s early death (1422). The army of 1415 was mostly recruited in central and southern England, and the king’s lands in Lancashire, Cheshire and south Wales provided its mainstay, archers. Though the Welsh revolt petered out after 1409, Glyn Dwr was at large until 1416 and there was resentment which had to be overcome if the king wanted to impose war taxation in Wales and raise Welsh soldiers. Thus, soon after he became king, Henry aimed to draw a line under the revolt. He even made overtures to Glyn Dwr in July 1415, a month before embarkation. Service in France and loyalty to the king benefited Welsh soldiers on their return and, in the longer term, reconciled Welsh families to English rule. 1415: in context England keeps the increasingly confident Scots at bay, expands overseas and is loyal to the king (after a rocky start) – but there’s trouble brewing Kingship in Britain was in crisis in the century’s first decade. After Henry IV (1399–1413) seized the crown from Richard II, who was murdered in 1400, it took nine years to overcome rebellion; in Scotland, James I’s captivity in England (1406–24) put government in the hands of senior nobles. Yet royal authority in both kingdoms was sustained by nobles, churchmen and subjects, and attracted widespread loyalty. Following Henry V’s invasion in 1415, England could wage continuous war in France for 35 years while keeping the Scots at bay. The remarkable Treaty of Troyes (1420) recognised Henry as heir to the French crown and he married a French princess. But after his death (1422), English nobles and gentry and his son Henry VI failed to fulfil Henry V’s ambitions before (1449–50) losing all the English conquests in northern France except Calais. By 1450, England was heading for civil war, the Scottish monarchy for a period of greater confidence. Each monarchy was the focus of intense patriotism and Scottish and English kings claimed dominions beyond their realms: the Scots against Norway in the Northern Isles, the English in Wales and Ireland which had long-established English administrations. At the Council of Constance (1414–18), the English proclaimed that the Welsh and Irish, even the Scots, were part of the English “nation”, just a few years after Owain Glyn Dwr led the most dangerous rebellion (1400–9) against Henry IV. These responsibilities were underpinned by sophisticated central and local governments and financial resources, especially in England; while the co‑operation of nobles (including great lords in the Welsh March, northern England and Ireland, and in west and north Scotland), gentry, the Church and townsfolk – often in Parliaments − was essential to maintain peace and wage war. Britain’s population was less than it had been, and famines and plagues recurred after 1400. The population was unevenly distributed: England’s was fairly stable at about two and a third million, more than the combined totals of Wales, Ireland and Scotland. Arable and pastoral farming, the economy’s foundation, was also unevenly spread in the lowlands and uplands, and stock rearing (especially sheep) became more popular. Although wool exports from English and Scottish ports were in the doldrums, England’s textile industry produced increasing quantities of good cloth for export; and while many towns had shrunk in size, some prospered and London (with Westminster) and the emerging Scottish capital, Edinburgh, were in a class of their own. Despite rebellion and war, the arts flourished through royal, noble and urban patronage and spiritual devotion. London’s Guildhall was begun in 1411, James I’s palace at Linlithgow in 1425; a Welsh knight began Raglan castle (1430s), Kilclief (County Down) was among many new tower houses, and “wool churches” sprouted in East Anglia. The poet John Lydgate was patronised by Lancastrian kings and nobles, and James I composed The Kingis Quair in captivity, both writers indebted to Chaucer (died 1400). The Irish question The crown’s second dominion, Ireland, was also a problem. Glyn Dwr tried to ally with independent Irish chieftains who resented Anglo-Irish lords and English governors in Dublin, and might assist England’s French and Scottish enemies. Moreover Ireland, more so than Wales, was a drain on English resources; when Henry V gave priority in men and money to the French war, the lordship of Ireland gradually fell under the control of Anglo-Irish lords. This detached Ireland from effective English rule during the rest of the century. The separate kingdom of Scotland was a greater threat. From the 14th century, the Auld Alliance between France and Scotland gave every English king who planned to campaign in France pause for thought that the Scots might launch raids, or worse, across the border. Henry V inherited one advantage from his father: King James I had been a prisoner in England since 1406. Yet this did not deter the Scots, for the Duke of Albany, Regent of Scotland, was not keen to negotiate James’s return, even though his own son, Murdach, was also imprisoned in England. In November 1414 Parliament took steps to defend Berwick and the borders, and Henry tried to come to terms with Albany by exchanging Murdach for Henry Percy, heir to the earldom of Northumberland, who had been in Scottish hands since 1402. This agreement would have been a useful insurance in 1415. But the exchange was postponed and shortly before Henry embarked for France, French envoys arrived in Scotland (22 June); a month later a Scottish force crossed the border and the English retaliated. The French war increased tension between England and Scotland, and Scots even served in French armies after 1419. 10 things you (probably) didn’t know about Scottish history Of course, Henry had to stamp his authority on England if he were to campaign in France – especially so early in his reign. His father Henry IV seized the crown from Richard II in 1399 but this act, which founded the Lancastrian dynasty, did not go unchallenged and he spent much of his reign fighting rebellions. When Henry V succeeded in 1413, some claimed that the deposed Richard II was still alive, and others believed that Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March, was his rightful heir. Henry also faced trouble from Lollard heretics inspired by John Wycliffe (died 1384), whose calls for church reform were regarded as traitorous, especially when, in January 1414, the king’s friend, Sir John Oldcastle, joined a rising. Parliament passed anti-Lollard legislation, and early in 1415 the execution of heretics in London gripped the public and the city chroniclers – and helped Henry harness the Church in support of his war. A plot to kill the king Oldcastle escaped and by August 1415 was causing trouble in the Welsh borderland, just when a plot against the king was being hatched. These threats to Lancastrian rule were not coordinated but Henry V’s war preparations gave them focus. The plot aimed to kill the king at Southampton and place the young Earl of March on the throne; but it was nipped in the bud, and the Agincourt victory ended for a generation all serious challenges to Henry and his son, Henry VI, that used the revolution of 1399 as justification. The leading plotters were the Earl of Cambridge, Lord Scrope of Masham and Sir Thomas Grey of Northumberland, hoping that March would attract support in Wales and Scotland. At the last moment (31 July), March himself revealed all to the king and the leaders were summarily executed; Henry left it to Parliament in his absence to endorse what he had done. The treatment of the plotters and the presence of most nobles in the English army reflect Henry’s success in mastering his enemies and reconciling dissidents. Victory at Agincourt induced Church and Parliament to support future campaigns. Agincourt entered English (and Welsh) mythology because contemporaries celebrated it, exaggerated Henry’s achievement and saw God’s hand in it all, and because Shakespeare’s vision has been compelling drama ever since. But it was close-run; Henry’s army left Southampton on 11 August, late in the season for a long campaign. It made for Harfleur on the River Seine, rather than English Calais, presumably “to stuff the town with Englishmen” so Normandy could be overawed, the channel secured and communications with Aquitaine established. But the army found the town of Harfleur heavily fortified and the siege was long and disease-ridden; a third of the army either died or was invalided home with dysentery. The town eventually surrendered on 22 September after heavy bombardment. The decision to march through Normandy to Calais turned out to be dangerous. Henry’s exhausted army, perhaps 9,000 men, mostly archers, had difficulty in finding a safe crossing of the River Somme, so that instead of covering 150 miles, they marched 250 miles in 17 days, allowing a larger French army to overtake them. In the heat of battle at Agincourt, moreover, Henry flouted chivalric convention by slaughtering many captives. But his victory on 25 October swept all criticism aside. To an English observer, the French seemed “like a countless swarm of locusts”, but they were not led by their king or his heir, and most of the royal dukes were absent. Henry donned his helmet with “a very rich crown of gold encircling it like an imperial crown” and delivered a speech to his men: “In the name of Almighty God, and of St George, Forward Banner! And St George this day thine help”. The French cavalry was dislocated by English and Welsh archers and the hand-to-hand fighting was ferocious. The French dead were piled to the height of a man’s head; the losses on the English side were astonishingly small. To the English, this seemed God’s work. Agincourt was not a decisive battle, though Harfleur’s capture was important. For the French, the battle was devastating to morale. For the English, it became the stuff of patriotic propaganda focused on Henry V and binding nobles, churchmen and Parliament to his causes. He was reportedly carried ashore at Dover on the shoulders of exultant subjects; in London (23 November) pageants proclaimed: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord”. Agincourt helped to create a regal myth that sustained the king and his French enterprise − and made subsequent defeats seem all the more scandalous. On the continent, the reputation of England and its king was transformed. At the Church Council at Constance (1414–18), English envoys lauded “our victorious king of England, Henry V, faithful soldier of Christ and strongest striver after peace”. Sigismund, Emperor of Germany, visited Henry (May 1416) to make peace between England and France, and went away his ally. In Italy the king was known as Il Magnifico. Agincourt’s memory spurred Henry to renew hostilities (1417) which led to the conquest of Normandy and the Treaty of Troyes (1420), which recognised him as heir to the French throne. 1415 was the year when the Lancastrian dynasty was stabilised at home and set out on extraordinarily ambitious paths abroad. History facts: 1400–1449 30 outbreaks of plague or pestilence occurred in the British Isles from 1400 to 1449, though they were increasingly localised and urban 37 English Parliaments were held between 1400 to 1449, all but four at Westminster Between 1415 and 1450 an English army crossed to northern France in all but five years Key years: Other important events in the first half of the 15th century 1400 – Henry subdues the Scots. After seizing Richard II’s crown, Henry IV faced serious difficulties. A conspiracy to assassinate him at Windsor was thwarted at the last moment, and the nobles involved were killed at Cirencester (January). Richard II’s murder at Pontefract (February) outraged many; in the summer Henry led an army to subdue the Scots; and in September Owain Glyn Dwr declared himself prince of Wales, prompting Henry to lead his first expedition against the Welsh. 1401 – Licence to burn. The statute “on the burning of heretics” enabled the first English Lollard, William Sawtre, to be burned at Smithfield (March). It authorised relapsed heretics to be punished by a government that feared insurrection as well as criticism of the Church. 1403 – Battle of Shrewsbury. By quick and decisive action, Henry IV defeated Henry “Hotspur” and his father Northumberland, who had Welsh and Scottish support, at the Battle of Shrewsbury (July). This marked the beginning of the king’s long but successful campaign to quell rebellion against him. 1412 – First Scottish university founded. Scotland’s first university was founded at St Andrews and received authorisation from Pope Benedict XIII. Before that Scottish students went to continental (especially French) universities for their education and religious training during the wars with England. 1420 – Henry V becomes Duke of Normandy. The notable Treaty of Troyes between Henry V and Charles VI of France (May) was the pinnacle of Henry V’s achievement. It recognised him as duke of Normandy and heir to the French throne, and in June he married Charles’s daughter Catherine. The Dauphin was disinherited and Henry and Charles entered Paris together on 12 December. Henry V died two months before Charles VI (1422) so that the “dual kingdom” was inherited instead by the nine‑month-old Henry VI. 1429 – Right to vote is defined. A statute of the English Parliament defined the qualification for voting in county elections: it was limited to freeholders with property worth 40 shillings net per annum and was probably designed to raise the standing of MPs and avoid disputed elections. The statute remained in force until the Great Reform Act of 1832. 1437 – A great frost heralds high food prices. According to the Great Chronicle of London, early in the year there was “a passing great frost − and one of the strongest that hath been seen. For bread was frozen so hard together that unless men would thaw it by the fire men might not eat it nor cut it with a knife but if they would hew it with axe or hatchet”. There followed several years of grain shortage and high food prices in England and Scotland. 1440 – Eton and Cambridge are founded. Henry VI founded Eton College for 25 poor scholars, the first English king to found a public grammar school with educational and religious objectives. Four months later (February 1441) he also founded King’s College, Cambridge. They were among a number of such foundations in mid-15th-century England. 1449 – English power declines. Events in this year heralded a collapse of political confidence in England: an English attack on the Breton fortress of Fougères precipitated renewed war with France which soon ended the English occupation of Rouen (October) and Normandy. Meanwhile, the disgruntled Duke of York withdrew to Ireland (June) where he had a power-base, while James II strengthened Scotland’s alliances in the Low Countries by marrying Mary of Gueldres (July). More turning points in British history Read next: 1483: Richard grabs the throne Go back: 1381: The Peasant's Revolt Ralph A Griffiths is a historian and an emeritus professor at Swansea University This article was first published in the December 2006 issue of BBC History Magazine
Henry V’s greatest victory (and it wasn't at the battle of Agincourt)
Henry V is best known as the brilliant warrior who won the day at Agincourt. But he was also a master diplomat, says Anne Curry, and he proved as much in the city of Troyes 600 years ago, when he was declared heir to the French throne
In Troyes on 21 May 1420, Charles VI, king of France, did something truly remarkable: he recognised the English claim to his throne. Acknowledging King Henry V as his rightful heir was nothing short of a humiliation for Charles’s nation. The ‘Hundred Years’ War’ appeared to be over. The English – personified by their young, vigorous king, Henry V – stood triumphant. At least for now. To appreciate the significance of this moment, it pays to take a closer look at what happened at Troyes six centuries ago. For more than 80 years, the rulers of England had waged war with the Valois kings of France, claiming that they had a stronger right to the French crown. Over the intervening decades, both sides’ fortunes had ebbed and flowed. Now, five years after Henry had led his first English invasion of France, there appeared to be an outright winner. By sealing the Treaty of Troyes, King Charles was not only acknowledging Henry as his rightful successor but also Henry’s heirs. In other words, the two crowns were to be, for all time to come, ruled by the same king – the king of England. The treaty had swept aside the claim to the French throne of not only the Dauphin (or heir apparent) Charles, the son of Charles VI, but also of all the other male members of the Valois royal house. Worse still for the French, Henry V was to be regent while awaiting his accession to the French throne because, since 1392, Charles VI had suffered repeated mental crises. To cement this remarkable settlement Henry married Charles’s daughter, Catherine, in Troyes on 2 June. She was crowned at Westminster Abbey on 23 February 1421, and in the following banquet, table decorations proudly proclaimed: “Through this fine marriage, war will cease.” Read more: A wayward prince? King Henry V’s misspent youth So how had Henry pulled off the coup of persuading, or forcing, the French to accept the English as rightful kings of France? For William Shakespeare, there was a simple explanation: Agincourt. In his 1599 play Henry V, Shakespeare draws a direct link between Henry's most famous victory, secured in October 1415, and his diplomatic triumph at Troyes. Henry was indeed one of England’s great military leaders. But if the years between Agincourt and the Treaty of Troyes teach us anything, it is that Henry was so much more than a brilliant soldier. He was also a talented diplomat and a ruthless opportunist. In short, he was a brilliant leader in peace as well as war, and those qualities yielded extraordinary results at Troyes. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/02/53032-1132486-scaled.jpg" width="2246" height="2560" alt="Hands in marriage: As part of the negotiations at Troyes, Henry V secured himself a wife: Catherine, daughter of King Charles VI of France. Here a 15th-century miniature shows the couple marrying in 1420. (Photo by Bridgeman)" title="Hands in marriage: As part of the negotiations at Troyes, Henry V secured himself a wife: Catherine, daughter of King Charles VI of France. Here a 15th-century miniature shows the couple marrying in 1420. (Photo by Bridgeman)" /> It’s important to remember that Henry was also helped by fatal vendettas within France in the early years of the 15th century, which seriously compromised attempts to fight off English invasions. At the heart of French divisions lay a bloody rivalry between two factions battling for control of the mentally ill king: the Armagnacs, who initially rallied behind Charles VI’s younger brother, Louis, Duke of Orléans, and the Burgundians. Tensions had been rising for years, but they exploded in November 1407 when John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy ordered the assassination of Louis. Civil war followed and soon both sides were appealing to the English for military support. Henry V’s decision to go to war in France in 1415 was surely motivated by an ambition to exploit the chaos engulfing his opponents. A bitter siege But Shakespeare was right in emphasising the longer term effect of Agincourt. Henry’s victory in 1415 made the French reluctant to face him in battle again. As a result, there was no major check to the campaign of systematic conquest that Henry began in Normandy on 1 August 1417. By the summer of 1418, almost all of Lower Normandy was under English control. The Norman capital, Rouen, proved a more difficult nut to crack, as a bitter six-month siege reveals. But once Rouen had accepted English rule in January 1419, much of Upper Normandy surrendered to Henry without resistance. Read more: 9 medieval battles more significant than Agincourt All the while, Henry showed skill in winning the hearts and minds of his new subjects by fanning their pride in Norman identity and separatism, reviving folk memories of the old Anglo-Norman ducal past. He also ensured strong military control within his newly conquered duchy, and encouraged both his administrators and soldiers through grants of land within it – a Norman Conquest in reverse, so to speak. In the face of this determined English advance, French divisions grew wider still until in late spring 1418 they reached a new nadir with a Burgundian attack on Paris. Not only did the Burgundians seize control of the capital, they also murdered Armagnac leader Bernard d’Armagnac and forced his successor as Armagnac leader, the Dauphin Charles, into flight. As for the king, he fell under the control of the Duke of Burgundy and was moved to Troyes for his ‘safety’. Once Henry V had taken Rouen, the Duke of Burgundy was willing to negotiate with the English. Henry too was keen to come to a settlement to consolidate his success. At the subsequent meeting at Meulan in June 1419, where Henry first set eyes on Catherine, the two sides came close to agreeing terms: the restoration to Henry of lands in south-west France granted to Edward III in the Treaty of Brétigny (1360), plus Normandy, and Henry’s marriage to Catherine with a large dowry. Yet this settlement was never enacted. At the last minute, the Duke of Burgundy and the Dauphin chose to work towards a joint endeavour against Henry. The English king decided to continue his advance towards Paris. But a meeting of the duke and Dauphin on a bridge at Montereau on 10 September 1419 destroyed all hope of unity, for it was here that henchmen of the Dauphin assassinated Duke John – an act of revenge for the Burgundian assassinations of Duke Louis of Orléans and Bernard d’Armagnac. A century later, in 1521 a Carthusian monk, showing King Francis I of France the damaged skull of Duke John, exclaimed: “My lord, that is the hole through which the English entered France.” He had a point: the Anglo-Burgundian negotiations that followed the murder at Montereau led to the terms that were sealed at Troyes on 21 May 1420. A kingdom divided The French civil war was preventing any effective resistance against the English, and Henry took advantage of the situation almost immediately, encouraged by the anxieties of the pro-Burgundian council in Paris, which was fearful of pending English attack. On 27 September 1419, English envoys presented a schedule that emphasised Henry’s claim to the French crown and which included several clauses later to be embodied in the treaty, including a marriage to Catherine – this time without the need for the French to offer a dowry. The Parisian council was amazed at Henry’s demands since they were so different from those he had put forward at Meulan only a few months earlier. But the English ambassadors explained that “things were now completely different” – by which they meant the English were now in a more powerful position. Henry then issued an ultimatum, giving notice to the new Duke of Burgundy, Philip, that his terms had to be accepted or he would not be responsible for the consequences. Philip agreed in principle to Henry’s proposals, seeing them as a way of gaining revenge for his father’s death, and on Christmas Day he formally recognised Henry as heir to the French throne. One chronicler observed that Henry “was delighted to have an alliance with the duke since he knew that it was through him that he could achieve a marriage with Catherine, which was very agreeable to him”. Through a combination of Burgundian and English persuasion, King Charles and Queen Isabeau also gave their assent. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/02/TWN80K_bigger-07edafd-scaled.jpg" width="2560" height="2132" alt="Battle for power: A 15th-century miniature of the battle of Agincourt. Over the following four years, Henry V would exploit this victory brilliantly, boxing the French into a diplomatic corner from which they couldn't escape. (Photo by Alamy)" title="Battle for power: A 15th-century miniature of the battle of Agincourt. Over the following four years, Henry V would exploit this victory brilliantly, boxing the French into a diplomatic corner from which they couldn't escape. (Photo by Alamy)" /> In the spring of 1420, an assembly of nobles, churchmen and town representatives at Troyes was told why Henry’s terms should be accepted: “First because Henry himself was wise, and a lover of God, peace and justice; he had true concern for the division and the parlous state of the kingdom of France caused by the Dauphin and his party; furthermore, the Dauphin had broken his solemn agreement with Duke John and was no longer worthy of any dignity or obedience.” The assembly declared the proposed treaty terms to be “most convenient, most profitable, and most necessary”. By 9 April the preliminaries of the treaty were agreed. All that remained was for Henry to come to Troyes for final discussions and ratifications, and for the public sealing of the treaty. Throughout the negotiations, Henry had shown himself a master of realpolitik. The salient element of the treaty was not simply that Charles VI had recognised Henry as heir to the French crown, but that Henry was willing for Charles to retain the throne until his death. While Henry had enjoyed much military success to date, he was all too aware that he was in no position to take the throne by conquest. By gaining the French king’s recognition, Henry reasoned that he was boosting his own credibility and therefore the chances of acceptance by the French people. He agreed that there would be no English ‘takeover’ of France, and that he would rule according to French practice. The king and queen would be respected and supported, and would remain in France. Intriguingly, Henry appears to have formulated the idea of such a delayed inheritance some years earlier. After the fall of Harfleur in September 1415 Henry had summoned the then Dauphin Louis to single combat. The winner, Henry suggested, should be acknowledged as the heir to Charles VI, but Louis never responded to the offer. By the time of the sealing of the treaty of Troyes, Charles VI was not expected to live for much longer. Henry would surely be king soon. Even as regent, he knew that he could rely on the support of the Burgundians in their search for revenge. Not surprisingly, the treaty included several clauses in their favour, as well as committing Henry to the destruction of their Armagnac enemy. Even so, Henry was aware of potential resistance within France to the terms of the treaty. As a result, the wider political community, as well as the main parties to the treaty, were required to pay public oaths to uphold the treaty, and to promise to obey Henry as heir and as king. What's more, Henry deemed it wise that there should be a formal summons to the Dauphin to face justice for the murder of Duke John, following proper French practice. After making a ceremonial entry together into Paris, deliberately timed for Advent Sunday, Charles VI and Henry held a lit de justice (a specific kind of court session). Hardly surprisingly, the Dauphin did not respond to the summons and was declared an outlaw. Triumph and death There were Frenchmen and women, even beyond the Armagnac group, who did not accept the validity of the treaty. For others, it offered a real hope of peace after many years of upheaval. As regent, Henry did not disappoint, both in his wise and sensitive government and in his successful military campaigns against the Dauphin’s supporters. Ironically, though, Henry’s end came through military actions. In 1422, just two years after sealing the treaty, he contracted dysentery – supposedly while besieging Meaux – and died on 31 August at the castle of Vincennes. He would never inherit the French throne despite his triumph in the Treaty of Troyes. Charles VI would follow him to the grave just two months later. And so it was that the infant Henry VI, born to Henry and Catherine on 6 December 1421, became the first king of the double monarchy of England and France. He was even crowned king in Paris, on 16 December 1431. At first it appeared that the Treaty of Troyes might continue to thrive despite the death of its formidable creator. John Duke of Bedford, regent in France for the young Henry VI, was a well-respected warrior. Paris remained particularly loyal to the treaty: soon after the death of Henry V, the leader of its mercantile community promised his successor that in return for aid against the Dauphinists harrying Paris, “We shall abide by what is right, and be ready to obey the commands and wishes of our sovereign lord.” It helped enormously that Duke Philip of Burgundy made clear at Henry V’s death that he stood fully by the Troyes settlement: “I am ready to commit myself and do everything necessary for the good of the kingdom of France and to maintain the treaty.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2019/02/shutterstock_editorial_6051054hl-709d02d-scaled.jpg" width="2560" height="2351" alt="Game-changer: An original copy of the treaty of Troyes. Had the treaty "succeeded into the longer term," writes Anne Curry, "the history of Europe might have turned out very differently." (Photo by Shutterstock)" title="Game-changer: An original copy of the treaty of Troyes. Had the treaty "succeeded into the longer term," writes Anne Curry, "the history of Europe might have turned out very differently." (Photo by Shutterstock)" /> The Dauphin only became a formidable opponent after he had himself crowned as king of France in the traditional crowning place of Reims in July 1429. That gave him credibility beyond his own supporters and a real chance of challenging the ‘English’ king of France. His achievement was down to the intervention of Joan of Arc, a key figure in lifting the siege of Orléans in May 1429 and as iconic in French history as Henry V is within the English national story. Faced with increasing opposition and the defection of the Burgundians to Charles VII in 1435, Henry VI’s regime in France crumbled. But that should not detract from what was agreed in Troyes in May 1420. Henry V was responsible for one of the most amazing treaties in history. Had it succeeded into the longer term, with the same king ruling England and France, the history of Europe might have turned out very differently indeed. The treaty proved ineffective once the English had lost most of their French lands in the early 1450s but it was not until 1801 that kings of Great Britain stopped calling themselves kings of France. While history remembers Henry V as a warmonger, he was also a peacemaker, and a skilled one at that – aiming to resolve centuries of conflict. His vision, as expressed in the treaty terms, was that “all divisions, hatred and rancours between England and France should cease and that the two realms should enjoy in perpetuity peace, tranquillity, affection, mutual agreement and firm friendship”. Henry may be most celebrated for what he achieved on the battlefield of Agincourt. But the treaty of Troyes was surely his greatest victory. Anne Curry is emeritus professor of medieval history at the University of Southampton. Her books include Henry V (Penguin Monarchs, 2015) LISTEN AGAIN: You can hear Matthew Parris and guests discuss Henry V in an episode of BBC Radio 4’s Great Lives This article was first published in the March 2020 edition of BBC History Magazine
Medieval(ish) matters #5: chivalry, medieval killer rabbits and prisoners of war in the 15th century
HistoryExtra content director David Musgrove rounds up the latest medieval stories on the website this week – considering chivalry, medieval prisoners of war, and rabbits in medieval marginalia
I’ve been contemplating chivalry, violence and slavery this week. Oh, and vengeful rabbits. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in lockdown too long, though it’s more to do with the fact that I was writing up a little web piece about the practice of taking prisoners in the Hundred Years’ War off the back of my podcast interview with Southampton University’s Dr Rémy Ambühl, an expert in such matters. Last week it was, as you might have noticed, the anniversary of the 1420 Treaty of Troyes, which followed Henry V’s famous Agincourt victory, so it’s a timely thing to be thinking about. (On that, Dr Paul Dryburgh and Dr Euan Roger at the National Archives ran an informative twitter thread on the documents associated with the Treaty.) View oEmbed on the source website So, Dr Ambühl and I talked a fair bit about how combatants could actually be taken prisoner during the course of a melee (which reminded me of an interesting conversation I had last year for our podcast with Dr Lauren Johnson about the depiction of the heart of the fighting in the battle of Agincourt in the film The King). Listen | Lauren Johnson discusses the history behind The King, considering how closely it follows the real events of Henry V’s life and reign Another part of the discussion was about the legal and moral justification for taking prisoners of war, which is bound up with concepts of chivalry and the medieval law of arms. What is chivalry – and where does it come from? Chivalry, as far as I can see, is a difficult concept to define, with various ideas as to what it boils down to. What it wasn’t, according to another expert in the field, the University of York’s Dr Craig Taylor, was the romantic idea that some hold today of “knights going round treating war as if it was some kind of game”. Where chivalry comes from is complicated. One line of thought is that chivalry as a concept evolves from the aftermath of the implosion of Charlemagne’s empire. Charlemagne (c747–814) of course famously created a huge European empire, which then fragmented on his death. If you listen to the excellent In our Time podcast on chivalry (featuring Professors Matthew Strickland, Miri Rubin and Laura Ashe), Professor Strickland explains how in the late ninth/10th centuries, bands of heavily armed warriors formed around local lords and developed an ethic of war different to that which existed in the Anglo-Saxon or Scandinavian world (where the end result of being 'on the wrong side' of a battle left you with two choices: death or slavery). Because they were essentially kinsmen, these Frankish warriors, says Strickland, developed a 'brothers-in-arms' mentality that allowed for honourable surrender, and from that a culture of clemency and ransom began to blossom. On that point, I’ve been reading a fascinating new book edited by Professor Laura Ashe and Dr Emily Joan Ward called Conquests in Eleventh-Century England, 1016, 1066. I’m hoping to record a podcast with Dr Ward about this soon, but one of the articles, by Professor John Gillingham, is about warfare and slavery in the 11th century, and he makes some fascinating points about how the Anglo-Scandinavians up to 1066 – and indeed Vikings, Irish, Scots, Welsh and Strathclyde Britons – were generally happy to kill men during and after battle, but preferred to send women and children to slave markets. By contrast, the “only human plunder the Normans took were those who were worth returning to family and friends after payment of a ransom, i.e. nearly always men”. So there are probably both economic and self-preservation forces at play in this developing idea of chivalry. Historians of the subject these days are at pains to point out that the concept of chivalry was never a constant –nor probably that clearly defined. Dr Taylor, for instance, points out that “There was no simple, fixed set of rules or standards for how such men should behave, and certainly no sense that to be chivalrous was a black or white proposition. Princes, noblemen and knights were expected to demonstrate prowess, courage and loyalty, as well as other important qualities such as largesse, mercy and prudence, in the pursuit of honour, fame and glory.” There was a difference between killing someone on the battlefield and killing them after their surrender. Dr Taylor in his book Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood During the Hundred Years War notes that: “The legal theorists and other writers debated questions such as the way in which prisoners were treated after their capture. For example, they emphasised the important distinction between acts that were committed during the heat of battle and violence inflicted upon prisoners after they had formally surrendered and therefore been accepted into the protection of their captor. Read more medieval matters blogs from David Musgrove: The Last Kingdom, Robin Hood and how to learn Old Norse in lockdown Back to Braveheart, Viking river boats, & the Crusades The salmon of knowledge & rolling Roman mosaics “[The late medieval thinkers and writers] Honorat Bovet and Christine de Pizan acknowledged that, in ancient times, captors had been able execute their prisoners at will, and also argued that, in their day, those taken in battle could be killed. Once a man had been taken prisoner, however, canon law required that he be treated with pity and mercy, and both writers emphasised that the only possible justification for killing an enemy away from the battlefield was that he might escape and thereby prolong or escalate the war.” Could a woman become a knight in medieval times? You might assume, then, that chivalry was really for the benefit of the losers (or at least the knightly losers, not the lower classes), as a bit of an insurance guarantee that you wouldn’t automatically end up dead or sold off into slavery if you didn’t win every battle. In fact, there is an idea that chivalry would have perpetuated endemic fighting because it allowed knights to continue battling each other over and over again. However, as Dr Taylor notes in the book cited above: “The taking of prisoners in high and late medieval warfare is often assumed to be an extension of the courtliness and politeness cultivated at the court and described in chivalric literature. In reality, the most powerful argument for mercy on a medieval battlefield was financial. Prisoner-taking was an extremely profitable business during the age of chivalry, both for soldiers and for the captains and commanders above them.” Prisonnier de guerre This chimes with what Dr Ambühl has noted in his research, which is based on tracing the origins of the French phrase prisonnier de guerre [prisoner of war]. He has noted that the 'ransom culture' expressed in the 14th and 15th centuries was not so much about mercy and protection for the losers, but more about the economic rights of the winners, who wanted to be able to ensure that they got what they were owed by ransoming those they had vanquished. As he says in his article Joan of Arc as prisonnière de guerre, in the English Historical Review: “The late medieval prisonnier de guerre [prisoner of war] was not first and foremost a combatant whose life ought to be spared, but rather an individual who could be traded (like a slave), either ransomed, exchanged or sold, and for whom even the crown had to pay the master. The prisonnier de guerre was primarily defined by their economic value which derived from the manifest property rights of the master in the prisoner.” Indeed, he has found a reference in 1434 to the English knight Sir William Bucton maintaining in court that his prisoner “was nothing but a slave who was in no position to do anything without the express consent of his master.” It's quite startling, to me at least, to hear talk of slavery in the 15th century like this. Anyway, listen to the podcast and you’ll find out a lot more on the topic: Listen | Rémy Ambühl discusses his new research into the fate of captives in the Hundred Years’ War This does take me back to the subject of our conversations in the virtual Medieval Life and Death festival last week. Dr Hannah Skoda talked about violence in the Middle Ages, and what was acceptable and what wasn’t, and clearly the development of chivalric ideas plays into that conversation. The growth of chivalry with the associated concept of 'courtly love' also informed the topic of Dr Sally Dixon-Smith’s talk on medieval love and marriage. All five talks, including ones on medieval food from Professor Chris Woolgar, religion from Dr Emma Wells, and medicine from Dr Elma Brenner, are still available to watch and enjoy on our website, along with the final wrap-up discussion with all our contributors. Medieval killer rabbits Another topic we discussed in our virtual festival – and particularly in the wrap-up – was the strange place that rabbits seem to have in medieval imagery. Search online for ‘medieval killer rabbits’ and you’ll find a wealth of blog posts about the strangely violent tendencies of bunnies in the Middle Ages. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2020/05/Medieval-bunnies-2-bbae5bd.jpg" width="600" height="413" alt="A scene from the Smithfield Decretals depicting a rabbit beheading a man. Rabbits seem to have a strange place in medieval imagery – and are depicted as having strangely violent tendencies. "It’s the sort of thing to give you nightmares," says David Musgrove. (Photo by Album/British Library/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="A scene from the Smithfield Decretals depicting a rabbit beheading a man. Rabbits seem to have a strange place in medieval imagery – and are depicted as having strangely violent tendencies. "It’s the sort of thing to give you nightmares," says David Musgrove. (Photo by Album/British Library/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> One particular image, from the British Library, is excellent. It shows a frankly terrifying scene where some vengeful rabbits capture their erstwhile human hunter, tie him down, try him, and then kill him. It’s the sort of thing to give you nightmares. I’m glad I didn’t see it when I was a boy, because I think I’m still traumatised and scared of rats since reading Beatrix Potter’s Tale of Samuel Whiskers. Listen | Karen Harvey explores the unusual case of Mary Toft who caused a sensation in 1726 by apparently giving birth to rabbits Anyway, what about those rabbits? I asked Dr Skoda if she could explain why rabbits do appear in such curious guise in medieval marginalia in the wrap-up panel discussion, and she had a great answer, which I repeat for you here: “If you were to look up, for example, the Luttrell Psalter in the first half of the 14th century, you find loads of examples of rabbits depicted in the margins of this absolutely beautiful manuscript. Many of them are doing pretty vicious things – some very comical. "What exactly is the purpose of these rabbit figures riding snails, carrying lances or brutalising another creature? The answer might be very controversial – Marginalia in manuscripts in general is something that stimulates a lot of debate. People can't really decide whether it's just intended as entertainment – or whether there's a genuine kind of subversive message there. “By the later Middle Ages, breeding rabbits has become a really big thing. In many ways, by the second half of the 14th century, it is kind of a symbol of oppression. The more that breeding rabbits becomes important, the more poaching rabbits becomes tempting – and the more exploitation is symbolised by the response to poaching. Perhaps these depictions of rabbits demonstrate that rabbits embody a sense of oppression and exploitation, because of what landlords are doing. 6 things you (probably) didn’t know about animals in ancient Rome “In 1381 in the Peasants’ Revolt in St Albans, the rebels take control of the pillory. They symbolise the fact that they've taken control of the pillory by putting a rabbit on it. So you have rabbits as clearly embodying a sense of social protest. "I’ll just quickly add a few words about hares. I'm not quite sure how to recognise rabbits and hares separately in manuscripts, but hares are a symbol of cowardice. So if you get hares depicted as knights, then they are saying something really quite subversive and comical about medieval knights.” And that returns us neatly to the start of this blog, in a satisfying circular sort of fashion, from knights, to leporids, and back once more to knights. David Musgrove is content director at HistoryExtra. He tweets @DJMusgrove. Do let him know if you have anything to add about medieval killer rabbits. Read the latest in his medieval matters blog series here
What was it like to be a Prisoner of War during the Hundred Years’ War?
What was it like to be taken captive during a medieval battle, and what happened to you afterwards? Historian Rémy Ambühl explains to David Musgrove…
One of the most infamous incidents from the Hundred Years’ War occurred at the battle of Agincourt in 1415, when some captured French prisoners were massacred by the English on the orders of King Henry V, as the French rear guard were preparing to make a last assault. Medieval historian Rémy Ambühl, from the University of Southampton, has been studying this subject – and was recently interviewed for the HistoryExtra podcast on how the capturing (and ransoming) of prisoners of war was a feature of the 116-year-long conflict. During the episode, he explains how a ransom culture developed with laws and practices that were designed to protect the economic interests of the captor, rather than the wellbeing of the captive. There were also some rules around how you would take, or allow yourself to be taken, captive during a battle. Listen | Rémy Ambühl discusses his new research into the fate of captives in the Hundred Years’ War “Touching the right hand and asking for ransom was a sign that would be understood in the heat of the action as the soldier giving up and handing himself over to the to his enemy,” explains Ambühl. “But that’s not the end of the story, because the prisoner would then effectively be in the possession of the person he has surrendered to. “You have his life in your hands and you are supposed to protect the prisoner at that point. So, you need to take him out of the battle. This is problematic if you are in the melee right in the combat. How does that happen? We can read that valets are there to help the knights; they take the prisoners and keep them outside the heat of the action. 9 medieval battles more significant than Agincourt The King: Henry V on film (podcast) “There were also other rules, too; these were made to avoid the neutralisation of the knights on the battlefield. Once you have taken your prisoner, you take their word and a token which proved that you had captured these prisoners, like a gauntlet or their sword,” continues Ambühl. “This would be evidence in the debate after the battle that he's your prisoner; and then you can go on fighting if the prisoners you've taken are put aside and their lives are not in danger.” Listen | Clare Makepeace explores the experiences of British soldiers who spent time in PoW camps in World War Two Battlefields were confusing places of course, and sometimes prisoners could end up being claimed by more than one captor, as Ambühl explains: “The place where prisoners are taken once the victory is secured on the battlefield… there starts the hunt, the chase of the prisoners, the chase of the defeated. And it is at that point that it becomes very dangerous in terms of casualties. If more than one person claims a captive, there are rules which share the ransom between the new captor and the former captor. There are plenty of disputes after battles because people are claiming that they took the same man.” How bloody was medieval life? A brief guide to the Hundred Years’ War – by Rémy Ambühl “The Hundred Years' War is one of the longest conflicts in history. It actually lasted 116 years, starting in 1337 and ending in 1453. It was caused by two overlapping problems. The first is the feudal issue, which was a problem involving land that the English kings held in France since the Norman conquest of England in 1066. These lands – the Duchy of Aquitaine – were held as fiefs [a piece of land usually entrusted to someone for their use that often generated income]. So, the English king was a vassal of the French king for the land he holds in France. “This became a problem between the two kings because [it meant that] the French king had a power of justice over the Duchy of Aquitaine. (Basically, he could interfere in the business of the English king ruling Aquitaine in France). This had been an issue in the 50 years before the Hundred Years' War. “There was also the overlapping problem of the dynastic issue. The English king Edward III claimed the throne of France on the basis of a claim he had from his mother, Isabella. This elevated his status from rebellious vassal of the French king to someone on an equal footing: claiming that he was the rightful king of France. “This was the origin of the war and the reason why it lasted 100 years: once Edward had claimed to be the king of France, he could not possibly settle on anything less. “The Hundred Years' War is usually divided in two phases. The first is the 14th-century phase, which saw big English expeditions. In France they are called the chevauchee (horse-riding raids). This gave way in the 15th century to more of a war of conquest and settlement. After the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 (following the English victory at the battle of Agincourt in 1415, which makes the English King Henry V heir of the French kingdom) it was more a war of conquest and pacification of the kingdom of France, which belonged to the English king. “It all ended in the mid-15th century, after Charles VII (of France) resumed war in 1449. The French reconquest lasted about five years, and the English were eventually expelled from the Duchy of Aquitaine and the Duchy of Normandy, which they had conquered 30 years before.” Henry V’s greatest victory (and it wasn't at the battle of Agincourt) What happened after a prisoner of war had been captured depended somewhat on their status and likely ransom value. The higher-ranking prisoners might end up in quite well-appointed quarters in castles and be reasonably well-treated. However, notes Ambühl, “you also read about prisoners being thrown into dungeons, pits, being fettered, shackled, tortured. But you don't hear much about them – the voices of lower-ranking people in general do not really emerge in the primary sources we have, and also because the prisoners who died had no voice at all. So it's actually quite tricky to see and fully grasp the bleak situation in which they found themselves.” To find out more about prisoners of war in the Hundred Years’ War and the ransom culture of the period, listen to the podcast here. David Musgrove is content director of HistoryExtra, plus its sister print magazines BBC History Magazine, BBC World Histories and BBC History Revealed
Rémy Ambühl discusses his new research into the fate of captives in the Hundred Years’ War
Historian Rémy Ambühl discusses his new research into the fate of captives during the era of the Hundred Years’ War.
10 things you (probably) didn’t know about Henry V and the battle of Agincourt
Henry V ruled England from 1413 until his death in 1422 and is one of England's most popular kings. Famed for his victory over the French at the 1415 battle of Agincourt, during the Hundred Years’ War with France, the king is remembered for his military abilities. Historian Teresa Cole shares 10 facts about the king, from his childhood as a hostage of Richard II to his battles as the young Prince of Wales…
Henry V (born c1386/7) ruled England from 1413 until his death in 1422. He is one of England's most popular kings, famed for his victory over the French at the 1415 battle of Agincourt, during the Hundred Years’ War with France. Henry V is remembered for his military abilities, and is the subject of a late 16th-century play written by William Shakespeare. Yet surprisingly little is known about Henry V. Was the king a good leader? And how did Henry V die? Teresa Cole explores the life and legacy of the medieval warrior king in her book, Henry V: The Life of the Warrior King & the Battle of Agincourt 1415. Here, writing for History Extra, she reveals 10 lesser-known facts about Henry V… Nobody knows when Henry V was born Henry V was born at Monmouth castle, perched high above the River Monnow, but there is no record of his birth, and even the year is uncertain. Some say his birthday was 9 August 1387, but an alternative date is 16 September 1386. The latter comes from a horoscope drawn up for the king and apparently commissioned by him just before the Agincourt campaign. However, the French astrologer who drew the horoscope was later accused in Paris of being an English spy, and it is possible the work was just an excuse for the man to come to England and meet with Henry. The king apparently showed no interest in the horoscope afterwards. “It’s hard to square Prince Hal’s pacifism with what we know about Henry V”: a historian’s review of The King A wayward prince? King Henry V’s misspent youth He was in Ireland with Richard II when his father seized the throne When his father, Henry Bolingbroke, seized the throne, the young Henry was in the custody of King Richard II as a hostage for his father’s good behaviour. Had it been a few centuries earlier he could have expected, at the least, to be blinded if not put to death. Richard, however, was made of different stuff. He had treated the boy well, spent time with him, took him with him on the expedition to Ireland, and even knighted him on the way. Even when he heard of the attack on his crown, he made no threats against him. What really happened at Agincourt? It seems that, in return, Henry saw Richard as something of a father figure. According to one account, when his own father – now secure in the palace of Westminster – sent for him, Henry went instead to Richard in the Tower, and only at his insistence went on to his father. When Henry himself became king he had Richard’s body exhumed from its obscure grave and reburied in Westminster Abbey. Listen | Historian and author Lauren Johnson discusses the history behind Netflix film The King, considering how closely it follows Shakespeare’s plays and the real events of Henry V’s life and reign His first battle was nearly his last Henry’s first battle [before he was king] was not against the French, but the English. At Shrewsbury on 21 July 1403 the 16-year-old Henry, Prince of Wales, lined up alongside his father to face the forces of the rebel lord, Henry Percy. At Shrewsbury Henry led his forces well, and made a major contribution to the victory. In the course of the battle, however, he was shot in the face by an arrow that entered below his eye, missed both brain and spinal cord and stuck in the bone at the back of the skull. To remove the embedded arrowhead, special tongs had to be designed, made and carefully inserted nearly six inches into the wound to grip and extract the metal. It took a further three weeks to cleanse and close up the hole – and all this in the days before anaesthetics. Henry V’s greatest victory (and it wasn't at the battle of Agincourt) He learnt his military tactics in Wales The tactics used by Henry V in his French wars were first tried out in Wales. At about the same time that he became Prince of Wales (aged 13), Owain Glyndwr began a violent rebellion against the English. The king’s policy of attack and withdraw was unsuccessful, and Glyndwr rapidly spread his influence from north Wales to almost the whole country. When, however, in his late teens, Henry was given a freer hand, he changed tactics. Now he concentrated on taking strategic castles which were then garrisoned and held securely, cutting off supply routes and enabling further advances. Gradually Glyndwr was forced back to two strongholds on the west coast – Aberystwyth and Harlech. Each was besieged and battered by traditional siege weapons, and, for what is thought to have been the first time in Britain, cannon were used. 7 facts about the Hundred Years’ War Eventually Glyndwr’s supporters were starved into submission, and though Glyndwr himself was never captured, the war was ended. A few years after this, using the same tactics, Henry conquered first Normandy, and then a large part of northern France. Legend has it his claim to France resulted from a Templar’s curse In 1307, Philippe IV of France seized the property of the wealthy Order of Knights Templar, and tortured and put to death its members. The story is told that, as the last Grand Master died, he laid a curse on Philippe and his descendants, saying the king would die within a year. Eight months later Philippe died in a hunting accident. Two years after that his son, Louis X died, aged 26, after a strenuous game of tennis. His son, John I, born five months later, lived only five days, and in the next 12 years the last direct male descendants of Philippe also died. The last Welsh Prince of Wales 9 medieval battles more significant than Agincourt Those closest in line to the empty throne were Jeanne, daughter of Louis and Jeanne of Navarre, and Edward III of England, whose mother was Philippe’s daughter. Navarre and England, however, were equally unacceptable, and Philippe de Valois, a cousin of the last king [Charles IV], was crowned instead. Edward challenged this, starting the so-called Hundred Years’ War, and it was his claim that was later revived by Henry V. Dick Whittington contributed to Henry’s wars A large slice of the money needed to pay for the French campaigns was raised by loans rather than taxes. In May 1415 Henry sent letters appealing for money to individuals, and to towns. Typically a town would decide on the amount of the loan, and then every citizen would be assessed to contribute even a few pennies to the sum agreed. Royal jewels, plate and regalia were handed out as security for repayment. Not only did this raise a large amount of money, but it meant almost everyone had an interest in the outcome of the French wars. Royal palaces of the Hundred Years’ War Behaving badly: Henry V's misspent youth One individual in London who lent money to Henry was Sir Richard Whittington, a rich cloth merchant who was indeed the same Dick Whittington as in the children’s story. He was lord mayor of London three times. ‘The Dauphin’ was three different people With the French king subject to fits of madness, his son the dauphin plays a prominent role in the accounts of Henry’s campaigns. The impression is often given that ‘the dauphin’, who, if Shakespeare is to be believed, insulted Henry with a gift of tennis balls [a sign of mockery], was the same ‘dauphin’ who would later be crowned Charles VII by Joan of Arc at Rheims cathedral. In fact there were three different dauphins over this period. The first was Louis of tennis ball fame, who, though kept away from the battle of Agincourt, died soon after, possibly of dysentery or pneumonia. Louis was followed by his brother John, who was the son-in-law of the Burgundian leader, John the Fearless. This dauphin died suddenly in April 1417, some said by poison, and he was succeeded by his last remaining brother, Charles, who after the death of Henry V, and with a great deal of help from his mother-in-law, Yolande of Aragon, finally became Charles VII in 1429. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/08/GettyImages-3365448-ac9d666.jpg" width="3378" height="2508" alt="25th August 1951: Richard Burton (1925 - 1984) as Henry V wooing Princess Katherine played by Hazel Penwarden after the victory at Agincourt. A scene from Henry V playing at Stratford. Original Publication: Picture Post - 5385 - Stratford's New Henry - pub. 1951 (Photo by Maurice Ambler/Picture Post/Getty Images)" title="Royal Love" /> A French commander told Henry how to win at Agincourt The French plan at Agincourt was to use massed cavalry to charge down the English archers. Henry V learnt of this from a French prisoner some days before the battle, and immediately took steps to counter it: every archer was to drive a sharpened stake into the ground in front of him on the battlefield to stop a charging horse. The plan worked very well but was probably not Henry’s own plan. The French commander, Marshal Boucicaut, had earlier fought against the Turks at the battle of Nicopolis, and had seen a cavalry charge halted by a similar mass of sharpened stakes. He had written an account of this and it is possible that either Henry himself, or perhaps one of his commanders, Edward Duke of York, had read it and remembered the effectiveness of the tactic. A number of those who died at Agincourt were suffocated There are no reliable figures for the size of the French army at Agincourt, but they numbered many thousands, and in their eagerness to get at the English most of the leading figures were crammed into the front ranks. When the action was triggered by a flight of arrows from the English side, the French charged forward in accordance with their battle plan. Funnelled into a narrower part of the field where Henry had taken up his position, the French were crammed together, and though many did not reach the English ranks, many more did. As these were cut down, those pressing behind climbed over them, and anyone who slipped or fell in the muddy ground had little chance of getting up again. As the battle progressed the pile of bodies rose higher, and any who were wounded or simply knocked over were crushed beneath the weight of those coming behind. Very few were found alive when the heaps of bodies were at last unpicked after the battle. Agincourt: medieval England's finest hour? 10 medieval dates you need to know Henry V died of dysentery and is buried in Westminster Abbey Sieges were dangerous places for both those inside and out: insanitary conditions and a shortage of fresh water frequently led to outbreaks of dysentery among the besieged and the besiegers, and it is likely that Henry contracted his final illness at the siege of Meaux – though it took some time to weaken him and claim his life. His body was brought back to England for burial, and after considerable ceremony he was laid to rest behind the altar in Westminster Abbey, close to his hero Edward the Confessor, and within yards of the tomb of Richard II. A magnificent chapel was erected around him, and a life-sized effigy placed on the tomb with a head of solid silver. Sadly the silver was stolen in the 16th century, and the later Tudor building dwarfs his resting place. Thousands of tourists pass the spot without realising he is there, and all that can be seen of the effigy is the soles of its feet. To find out more about Teresa Cole’s Henry V: The Life of the Warrior King & the Battle of Agincourt 1415 (Amberley Publishing, 2015) click here. This article was first published by History Extra in April 2015
Lauren Johnson discusses the history behind the new Netflix film The King, considering how closely it follows the real events of Henry V’s life and reign
Historian and author Lauren Johnson discusses the history behind the new Netflix film The King, considering how closely it follows Shakespeare’s plays and the real events of Henry V’s life and reign.