Why did many English archers go into battle without pants at the Battle of Agincourt?
According to historical evidence, a quality English longbow could shoot an arrow with such force that it easily pierced a 4 inch (10 cm) oak door. True or not, we do not undertake to judge. However, we can definitely say that it was a really dangerous long-range weapon of the Middle Ages.
It is believed that it was during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 that the whole world finally witnessed another confirmation of the power of the famous English longbow. Many eyewitnesses wrote that the British rained down so many arrows on the French that after the battle the whole field looked like snow, because it was densely littered with protruding white-feathered arrows.
However, not only English longbows distinguished themselves in that battle, but also their owners. Historians point out with certainty the little-known fact that so many English archers went to the Battle of Agincourt without pants or with their pants completely down!
Let’s start with a little history
In 1415, for the first time after almost 19 years of a fragile truce between England and France since the Carolingian War, King Henry V continued the Hundred Years’ War. He entered the struggle for the Duchy of Normandy and wanted to assert England’s claim to the crown and power over the lands in France, like his great-grandfather Edward III.
The timing of war seemed perfect: France was in the midst of a civil war, and successful military action against a sworn enemy would help to strengthen Henry’s authority as king among his people, as well as strengthen the loyalty of his subjects, since Henry’s influence and position at that time was very precarious. .
On April 15, 1415, King Henry met with leading nobles and prelates and announced his intention to lead the English army into France.
Most of Henry’s army consisted of archers with English longbows.
King Henry V led a well-trained and disciplined army of 15,000 men into France. In the future, the size of Henry’s army will be significantly reduced, but more on that later.
Of the approximately 8,000 soldiers that Henry commanded at the Battle of Agincourt, only 3,000 were men-at-arms on horseback and knights in heavy armor. All the rest were English and Welsh archers armed with the English longbow, a weapon known for its deadly range.
The French army, on the other hand, numbered from 20 to 30 thousand people, including more than 10,000 thousand knights in armor, of which several thousand were horsemen.
Henry posted his archers on the flanks behind the palisades of sharpened wooden stakes. However, many archers in this battle felt absolutely terrible and fought “without pants”.
Most of Henry V’s archers are believed to have suffered from dysentery.
Shortly before approaching Agincourt, Henry’s army suffered greatly from dysentery during the six-month siege of Harfleur. About 3,000 soldiers with a severe infection, Henry V sent to the captured French city of Calais, where they could recover from their illnesses.
It would seem that the danger has passed. However, during a long transition and approach to the village of Agincourt, exactly two days before the start of the Battle of Agincourt, another outbreak of dysentery broke out in Henry’s military camp, which mowed down about 30% of his army and threatened the failure of the entire English campaign. Probably, the outbreak of the disease occurred due to the consumption of bad water and food consisting of seafood by Henry’s army during a long march.
The problem affected soldiers of all ranks, but hit the archers the hardest, since they made up the bulk of Henry’s forces.
Historian Juliette Barker, author of Agincourt: King, Campaign, Battle, credits dysentery as one of the reasons the British were so heavily outnumbered by the French: much of Henry’s army was demobilized and weakened by disease outbreaks. It was impossible to completely get rid of new sick soldiers in the army just before the start of the battle.
Fearing a decline in morale throughout the army from a large number of deaths due to complications caused by dysentery, Henry V separated the sick and ordered strict discipline to be maintained among healthy soldiers, demanding that they spend the night of October 24 in absolute silence. Soldiers and knights were warned that disobeying orders would cost them their horse and harness. Meanwhile, the lower ranks were threatened with the loss of their right ear.
So why did many archers go to the Battle of Agincourt without pants?
The famous Battle of Agincourt took place on the day of Saints Crispin and Crispian, on Friday, October 25, 1415, between the armies of King Henry V of England and King Charles VI of France. This battle became one of the three largest land battles of the Hundred Years War.
It is noteworthy that several hundred English archers with dysentery still participated in the battle, as they suffered the disease in a mild and moderate form. They were separated from the main British army and fired on the French on the flanks, entering the battle without any “pants”.
Of course, it is rude and wrong to say the word “pants”, because in those days men did not actually wear them. In this era, men wore chausses, something similar to men’s tights or stockings, tied together with ropes, and sometimes with an attached codpiece (if it was plate armor).
Dysentery is a disease that basically causes inflammation of the intestines, leading to excessive and uncontrolled diapee. It is believed that during this illness, a person can uncontrollably go big 10 to 20 times a day. Now imagine that the archer during the battle was staggering from weakness, abdominal pain, nausea and constant uncontrollable diapeu.
Approximately similar information is provided by three chroniclers, such as Jean le Fevre, Jean de Vorin and Enguerrand de Monstrelet. The quotations about dysentery in the English army from Le Fevre and Vorin are of particular interest, since both of them were present at this battle.
Although some modern historians continue to argue that Henry sent all the sick before the battle.
The hardy, hardy veterans in Henry’s army could handle the fever and fatigue, but the constant loss of bowel control was a problem on the eve of an already ominous battle.
We will probably never know the truth about exactly how many archers had dysentery and how many of them actually fought with “stockings down to their knees” or with “breeches missing” completely. But some in Henry’s army no doubt suffered from dysentery during the battle, and some historians, as you may have read above, point out explicitly that some of these soldiers took off their chausses just before the battle began.
Due to their favorable location, archers suffering from dysentery simply threw off everything below the belt in order to surrender to the “call of nature” at any moment.
As the French cavalry and heavily armed men attacked the English positions, the archers fired a barrage of arrows so thick it supposedly darkened the Sun. Arrows fired from a long English bow hit the weak spots in the armor of the French knights, the neck and knee joints, as well as the open joints of the plate breastplate. It is believed that in addition to armor-piercing arrows, archers also dipped their arrows into tainted exercises, setting up a real Medieval biological warfare.
French nobles and knights fell in droves, many of them hit by a few arrows fired with enough force to pierce the armor of the horses. Other knights fell off their horses due to the slippery mud after a downpour, and then were finished off by the English knights or trampled by horses, frightened by a huge amount of arrows.
As a result of this massacre, between 6,000 and 10,000 French soldiers died, while the British lost only a few hundred people.
