Blog: Learning with 'e's: Two fingered salute

Description

They stood facing each other across a muddy ploughed field. It had rained heavily the night before. On the one side, flying their colourful banners, the pride of French medieval nobility: at least 30,000 men in shining armour, armed to the teeth and ready for an overwhelming victory. On the other side, the army of Henry V - less than 8,000 English and Welsh soldiers, weakened and bedraggled from weeks of forced marching, dysentery and hunger. The French looked like they had just stepped out of a Louis Vouton boutique, and their opponents looked like crap. Yet over the course of a few hours, the small dishevelled British army systematically took their enemies to pieces with the result that the French dead were piled up in walls, and their noble families, sometimes three complete generations, were slaughtered like cattle. The French snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, losing over 5000 dead, while the British sustained around 200 dead. The year was 1415, and the battle took place just outside the tiny French village of Azincourt. The Battle of Agincourt radically altered the course of European history, and Henry V regained the crown of France through his determination, will to succeed and the sheer pugnacity of his ‘happy few’, his ‘band of brothers’.

The French should never have met the British in open battle. From previous heavy defeats at Crecy (1346) and Poitiers (1356), they had reason to fear the longbow of the English and Welsh archers, who each could accurately fire a dozen or more armour piercing bodkin arrows a minute. In the reloading stakes the French cross-bows were no match. ...

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http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2009/08/two-fingered-salute.html

http://steve-wheeler.blogspot.com/2009/08/two-fingered-salute.html