Agincourt
Reevaluating
Michael Livingston offers a fresh perspective on this brutal, landmark battle
Interview by Jonathan Gordon
Like Hastings, Waterloo and Trafalgar, the Battle of Agincourt has a large and venerated place in military history. Considered to be one of the greatest English military victories, the recently crowned Henry V led his numerically smaller force to an unexpected triumph against the Kingdom of France. Taking place on 25 October 1415, in the later half of the Hundred Years’ War, it was a battle that cemented the already growing reputation of the young English monarch. The underdog story, its place within history and the heroic image of Henry have combined to make Agincourt one of the most analysed and discussed battles from history, but do we understand it correctly? Historian Michael Livingston has gone back to the ground itself to reevaluate the facts, discovering some fascinating new details along the way, for his new book Agincourt: Battle Of The Scarred King.
EXPERT BIO
MICHAEL LIVINGSTON
An award-winning historical author and professor at The Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, Livingston has written books such as Never Greater Slaughter and Crécy: Battle Of Five Kings.
What drew you to reevaluate Agincourt, an iconic battle that has
obviously had a great deal written about it in the past?
I spent many years investigating the case of the Battle of Crécy in 1346, and anyone doing that work can hardly prevent thinking about Agincourt in 1415. Though separated by nearly seven decades in history, these two great English victories are separated by only a half hour or so on the ground today. Visiting one, it was easy to visit the other, and what I found quite quickly was that the traditional story of Agincourt, like the traditional story of Crécy, didn’t seem to fit with what we were being told about the battlefield. And in both cases, attempts to find archaeological evidence to back up the traditional story had come up painfully short: in the case of Agincourt, Tim Sutherland, one of our finest conflict archaeologists, had already raised the question of whether we had the battle in the right spot. So as I closed the case on Crécy, it seemed only natural to open the case on Agincourt. Perhaps I’d find that everything we’d been told was right after all. Perhaps not. The only way to know was to dive in.