Article: Most books about battles concentrate...

Most books about battles concentrate on military tactics and formations: think of all those neat little diagrams showing two rows of blocks facing each other, with arrows indicating the route of their advance or retreat. Everything looks very tidy and precise and organised.

You will not find a battle plan in my book for two very good reasons. First, it is impossible to draw up a schematic that definitively reflects what took place because no one, not even those who were present, could agree on exactly what took place in the heat of battle. Second - and this is a purely personal view - I believe that to depict a battle in this way somehow denigrates the human beings who actually fought and died there, reducing them to mere pieces on a chessboard.

For me, the most interesting thing about the Agincourt campaign is the people who were involved and it is their stories I have tried to tell. Who would have believed, for instance, that Henry V employed a female blacksmith in the Tower of London who forged his armaments and literally kept the home fires burning whilst her husband was on campaign? Or that one of the Frenchmen who fell fighting on the field of Agincourt was no other than Jean Montaigu, better known as the archbishop of Sens? What about the Lancashire archer, Roger Hunt, who had the misfortune to earn his place in history by being killed in the battle 'with a gun' (one of the first such casualties on record)? Or the many unfortunate French families who lost not one, but two, and even three, generations at Agincourt, grandfathers, fathers and sons dying together in the slaughter.

There are unsung heroes, like the wonderful Raoul de Gaucourt, who succeeded in getting a relief force into Harfleur under the nose of a furious Henry V, led a long and gallant defence of the town which thwarted the king's plans for the rest of his campaign and then spent ten years in an English prison for his pains. There are also larger than life villains: John, ironically known as 'the Fearless', duke of Burgundy, who murdered his opponents without scruple, betrayed his country by making secret alliances with England and deliberately avoided having to commit himself to either party by absenting himself from the battle. And then there are the simply pathetic: Charles VI, king of France, who, in his bouts of madness, thought that he was made of glass and was therefore afraid to sit down in case he shattered. Or the poor woman, mother of seven dependent children, who, six months after the battle, did not know whether she was a wife or a widow because her husband's body could not be found.

This is the reality behind those faceless, nameless, emotionally detached battle plans. We should never forget that the neat little blocks on the page represent people. That is why, I hope, my book breathes new life and humanity into the story of Agincourt.

Copyright © 2006 Juliet Barker