Random Things That Went Wrong For French At The Battle Of Agincourt (13 items)

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  (#13) The French Losses Kept On Coming, Even After The Battle

  At Agincourt, the English took thousands of French prisoners. Once the battle was complete, the English had no way to keep all of them alive, nor did they have any use for men that would not get them any ransom. As a result, many of the prisoners were gathered into a nearby barn, locked inside, and burned to death. Hundreds of others were slaughtered by English archers and men-at-arms. The French nobility was all but destroyed.  
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  (#7) The French Leaders Tried To Match The English, But It Was Too Late

  
  Because the French aristocracy, mainly knights on horseback, didn’t allow for their inferiors to have weapons, the French army relied heavily on light and heavy cavalry. At the Battle of Agincourt, the French commander Jean II Le Maingre, also known as Boucicault, had Genoese crossbowmen to accompany his forces, but generally speaking, the French lacked the tactics needed to match their English enemy.

  Boucicault had experience fighting the English and was determined to counter the English longbowmen at Agincourt. He had a plan in place to advance upon the French with his knights while sending crossbowmen around the English flanks. Unfortunately, the battlefield was too narrow for Boucicault to execute his strategy and his knights ended up bottlenecked and trapped.
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  (#10) The French Knights Trampled Each Other

  In the midst of a narrow battlefield, panicked men and horses, and inescapable mud, the French began to trample one another. They were trapped by their tight formations and as the men in the rear advanced, there was nowhere for the men in the front to go except into the battle-ready hands of the English. When a longbowman ran out of arrows, he'd use his sword or ax and hand-to-hand combat ensued. The vulnerable, iron-laden French knight, fresh off of his horse and sinking into the ground, found himself at the mercy of the quicker and more nimble English soldier.  
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  (#4) The French Leaders and Soldiers Got Cocky

  The French outnumbered the English with anywhere from 12,000 to 36,000 troops to their 5,000, depending on which source one believes. The English troops were weak and weary, solemn and resolute the night before the battle. The English had been beaten down by disease, lack of food, and threats of French counterattacks since they'd arrived in France in August 1415. On the eve of Agincourt, Henry V ordered his men to remain completely silent, for fear of a surprise attack by the French. Meanwhile, their French counterparts drank and rabble-roused, certain of their impending victory. 
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  (#2) The French Nobles Were Fighting Each Other

  With a weak king, aristocratic aspirations were at their peak. During a break in the fighting with England, French nobility - namely the Dukes of Orleans and Burgundy - vied with one another for land and influence at the royal court. Charles VI’s brother, Louis, the Duke of Orleans, purchased a significant portion of land in Burgundy in 1402.  The land, which Burgundy considered private and not for sale, was purchased with the money Louis drew from his royal income. Louis’s enemies responded – not only in support of Burgundy, but also to undercut the power of the King’s brother blaming increased taxation on Louis’s excess. 

  Louis was assassinated in 1407 as the rivalry became more volatile.  Louis’s son, Charles of Orleans, responded by making any and all allies of Burgundy his enemies, launching a 30-year civil war between the two sides.
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  (#8) The French Army Should Have Stayed On Defense

  On the morning of October 25 near Agincourt, the French and the English troops stood and stared at each other for three hours. Both sides intended to stay on the defensive and hold their positions, but Henry V got impatient and started the battle. (His speech prior to the battle, made famous by Shakespeare, was an invention of the Bard, but remains a symbol of English nationalism.)  

  The English advanced, getting close enough to the French lines to barrage them with arrows. This drew out the French cavalry – a cavalry advance that took place without orders - and destroyed thousands of French troops in minutes.  

  According to the chronicle of Enguerrand de Monstrelet, a supporter of the French, troops "had their horses so severely handled by the archers... the horses were becoming unmanageable, so that the horses and riders were tumbling on the ground, and the whole army was thrown into disorder."

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