Edward, Duke of York, led the vanguard. He would be the only noble English casualty, sharing the same fate as many of his French opponents – smothered to death in the mud.
The King himself commanded the main body. Henry had been fighting since he was fourteen. He’d won his spurs in the Welsh Marches, fighting Owen Glendower and the rebel Percys. This was not a king who skulked at the back. He wore a golden crown on his helmet, which would make him instantly recognisable to friend and foe alike. Over his head hung the Royal Standard of England – the golden Lions of England on their red background, quartered with the blue and gold Fleur-de-Lys of France, which must have pissed off the French no end. Alongside the standard, the banner of St George hung limply. There was no wind today and the heavy air was damp.
I could hear Peterson calculating numbers. He estimated the English forces at between eight or nine thousand. He glanced at me for confirmation and I nodded. The French forces were more difficult to compute. Behind the three lines of mounted knights and the ranks of men-at-arms behind them, the French camp seethed in chaos.
Thousands milled around in the rear. Servants, spare horses, commoners, grooms, pages, camp-followers. And the archers. Regarding them as inferior troops, they left their archers behind the lines. What were the French commanders thinking? Henry had no such qualms and his archers would win the day.
We settled eventually on between thirty and forty thousand French troops. Which made the English, playing away, outnumbered by about four to one.
The English waited patiently as the French got themselves sorted out. Around us, the day lightened a little, although thick clouds still obscured the sun. The woods around us were completely silent. I could just hear an occasional drip of water rolling off a leaf somewhere and splatting onto the carpet of wet leaves.
From where we lay we could see part of the English force and the massive French lines drawn up against them.
They were ready.
We checked our equipment again.
We were ready.
Everyone was ready.
And nothing happened. Both sides stared at each other across the muddy fields. Sounds carried clearly in the still air. I could hear the chink of horses’ bits, the scrape of metal on metal, and the creak of leather.
Time passed.
Henry now had a problem. He knew the French were unwilling to fight. They were waiting for reinforcements. Although where they would put them was anyone’s guess. Already their ranks were packed so tightly they could barely move their sword-arms.
The English, on the other hand, couldn’t afford to wait. The men were weary. Weary unto death, as the saying goes. They had no lines of supply. The last thing they needed was to wait endlessly on foreign soil feeling their courage ebb away while the enemy gathered strength.
The military manuals of the time were very clear. He who moves is lost. The accepted wisdom was to stay put and let your enemy come to you.
Henry, typically, took a calculated risk. Orders were shouted. Horns blew and the archers ripped out their stakes. The whole army was on the move. He marched them towards the French, reached the place where the woods formed a narrow waist, and halted there.
Peterson and I, lost in the moment – again – inched our way closer, wriggling through drifts of wet leaves, desperate for a closer look.
This was the most dangerous moment of all. Until they could hammer their stakes into the ground, his archers were completely unprotected. If the French moved now, all was lost.
But they didn’t. Inexplicably, they stayed put. Who knows why. They hesitated long enough for the English archers to dig themselves in behind their stakes again and suddenly, it was a whole new ball game.
Suddenly, the English were only three hundred yards away from the French lines. Whether the French were aware, at that moment, that this despised rabble was actually a well-trained, well-led, disciplined, almost professional army, they certainly would be in several hours’ time.
Their own ranks consisted of the flower of French nobility, mounted knights – the football stars of the medieval age – behind them, large numbers of men-at-arms; and behind them, conscripted peasants. Because, yes, having ten or fifteen thousand ignorant, reluctant, undisciplined, untrained, unpaid, resentful serfs to back you up was such a good idea. Leonidas the Spartan, berated for arriving at Thermopylae with only three hundred troops pointed out that he’d brought three hundred professional soldiers and while everyone else may have brought thousands, they were only farmers and stable boys. The French should have paid more attention to the classics.
A small group of unarmoured heralds detached themselves from the French ranks, picking their way disdainfully through the mud. They halted and waited under their blue and gold banner – the Fleur-de-Lys of France.