AGINCOURT - Medieval Myth Busting

Hi, I'm Tod from Tod's Workshop here at the Wallace Collection with Dr. Toby Capwell. We're here on behalf of Medieval Myth Busting, the arrows versus armor series, really just to chat a little bit more about the history of Agincourt, what happened on the day of that battle, the order of events and really just breaking it down in more detail. , so Toby was really the one who started us off. How did he do? One of the reasons we chose Agincourt is because it is actually very well documented, there are official accounts in English, there are French chronicle accounts based on eyewitness accounts, we know the terrain, we know more about this battle and we have a better chance of understand it than most and that is good because it is also one of those

myth

ologized battles, you know, but perhaps the most

myth

ologized of all battles and I mean the whole process of how Agincourt was mythologized and why it is fascinating and much more complex than we might think, but we also have the battle you know I am personally, although I am interested in myths and stories and things like that I want the facts to say that you know I am the Duke of Brabant.

I wake up at nine in the morning, they have the battle. I've got my hot little posset and my bun, and then what? Well...yeah, okay...the battle of Agincourt is the end result of a military campaign that Henry V had invaded Normandy with the ultimate goal of becoming king of France and taking a claim that he felt had been his. Having taken the port city of Harfleur, he led his army cross-country through northern France, moving west to east from Harfleur in Normandy to the Pas de Calais. It is difficult to know why he was doing this and different historians.

I have different ideas but it certainly seems like he is trying to get a fight, he needed a decisive victory to further his cause and it actually took quite a while for the French to respond and eventually the French had different armies coming from different places. and everyone trying to intercept him and catch him and he crosses the Somme and then moves north but they are already in front of him and there was a lot of maneuvering to start with but the point was that when they got to Agincourt Henry was a little trapped but he was still in a position to choose the terrain and has a highly organized, very well disciplined army, made up of people who have been fighting and living together for weeks and is facing a conglomerate of several different French armies, all pulling together and the problem with the side French was that no one was really in charge, there were several princes of royal blood there and of course each of them thought they should be in charge, they also had other veteran military commanders who should have been listened to. maybe but it wasn't that much.

The English had also captured the French battle plan, which is a big deal, so yes, yes, yes, there was a lot of clandestine stuff with Scouts intercepting other Scouts and there's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff going on before the armies actually got together. they will find. And you know, a French messenger was attacked by some English in the forest and they got the written battle plans that survive. The battle plan is a window into what the French intended to do. His original plan was really good. But Henry's response, knowing what they are thinking, is to put themselves in a place where they cannot do what they wanted: they wanted to use large detachments of cavalry, not in a frontal attack like in Crécy or previous battles, but they wanted to slow down the movement of clamp and hit him on the flanks with cavalry, which would have been really effective.

That's the right thing to do against mass archers, that's what they were going to do. And then advance on foot. They always had this plan of using cavalry and heavy infantry together. Because at that point they had already established that entering on horseback against arches and a frontal assault was always very risky and that it is much better to go on foot. Well, I want to say that it is important to mention that none of the French who participated in the battle had fought against the English before in a major battle. You know that the French in Agincourt are not the same French as those in Crécy, those in Agincourt are new to this and have not fought a major field battle against the English before, so Marshal Boucicault, one of the military commanders in Agincourt .

He had a lot of experience in fighting, but it was still his first time in this situation. They had a good plan and it made a lot of sense on paper, but Henry found out and positioned himself in an area that was surrounded by dense trees on both sides, making it a great protection for his archers from the attack. sides and that's like archers in battle 101, you have to protect them, yes, you don't deploy your archers unless they are protected, they must be protected by trees, stakes, ditches, heavily armed knights, rivers, whatever, Yours archers must be protected.

If you put them on an open plain without protection, they will be wiped out and that was the case on many occasions. There are many battles in this period that the English lost and the English archers and men-at-arms couldn't do what they wanted, so the French have a history of victories at this time and let's not forget that. that. It's easily forgotten because you think that the English always won, or that the bow always won, that it was like victory, victory, victory, and you forget that there are also defeats because, of course, they don't figure prominently in the mythology.

Well, you don't talk about it because, you know, it ruins the myth that you're trying to build and therefore it's typical selection... you know, selection bias. So we have to be careful with that. So the French had a good plan, but Henry outmaneuvered them and they couldn't do what they planned to do and because they didn't have a rigid or clear command structure, they couldn't effectively change what they were going to do and essentially tried to do it anyway, even in a topographical setting where it was inappropriate, is it essentially that the French were smaller armies, if you will, each uniting with their own agendas under their own nobles and the overall cause was forgotten for their own interests? own individual goals?

Yes, I mean they all wanted the same thing, they were all deeply offended because you know the English king is marching through the north of France with a big fleur-de-lys on his helmet, you know what it is and you know the English code of art. The English royal coat of arms in itself is an affront because it is quartered with the arms of France, it is a visual promotion of the agenda, but everyone wanted that, but there was no command structure, no, you know, it was not clear who was. was in charge and it wasn't clear what the approach was going to be and you know the opportunity to kill the English king in hand-to-hand combat is something that everyone understandably wanted and you know Henry was putting himself in the middle of his line of defense. battle with this crown on their helmet and the royal coat of arms and the golden armor, it's like it's like a monkfish, you know, hanging in front of them and what that does is it makes them when they make their main advance on foot, already You know, nine thousand heavily armed knights or something, they all go towards the center and ignore the flanks, which was fine in the original plan because in the original plan they were going to destroy the flanks with the cavalry. but they hadn't made it, they went ahead anyway and you imagine it's these extended flanks of the English army with hundreds and hundreds of archers on them and the French are marching directly alongside them to get to the center and So there's a lot of opportunity in the battle to shoot people from the sides and of course from the front and ultimately even possibly from behind.

Then, once they have passed, you will have these, the French Knights, who will literally be the focus of the arrows coming from all directions. And that is the important point: this is the story of an English army that, as we have said, has a very clear command structure, a very high morale, very well disciplined, they have a diversity of forces, they have archers and fully armed nights and men-at-arms who are accustomed to working well together to capitalize on each other's strengths and compensate for each other's weaknesses and have their King on the field. The French do not have their King in the field.

They have no diversity of forces because they are all fully armed Knights and Men-at-Arms. They had archers there but they didn't use them. You can only count those who participate. Those who are actually fighting if they don't engage don't count and it was a force made up entirely of guys in full armor on the French side. Now those guys have advantages, they have their strengths when they reach the English line. They still drive the entire English line back a spear's length, as some accounts say, even with all their problems, the thick, sticky mud of Pas-de-Calais that they have to traverse through the fact that they are wearing his armor. on the heaviest setting because they know they will get shot at.

The lack of command structure, all of that. The fact that their enemy is determining everything about this fighting situation, which is a bad situation, you don't want your enemy to decide how it's going to be, but that's what's happening and they still managed to make an impact. significant with the English line and there's a lot of fighting, so that's the main thing and archery's role in that, I've always suspected, is a lot more complicated than just taking people down. A little bit during the day you were talking about how the French had a plan that the cavalry was going to enter on the sides of the Archers and that even though their plan was indeed hindered by the disposition of the English forces, they still chose to that.

Anyway, they're still trying to do that, so there was a cavalry mobilization and the cavalry advanced in the early stages of the battle and then there was long-range firing by the English to disrupt them? Or target the horses? Or what do we know about that? I mean, I haven't read all the comments, but I read as many as I could and the whole scope thing came up and the whole horse thing came up and you know those kinds of questions need to be addressed together but also individually. Regarding the role of the cavalry in the battle, it is important to emphasize that although there was cavalry action at Agincourt it was not really the significant stage of the battle, they tried this, it did not work, they continued with their main advance and that is important because there were battles previous.

Crécy is the obvious example where there really was armored cavalry against the English on foot and the archers had to repel the charges of the front line cavalry and I think in mythologizing this we tend to forget that Crecy and Agincourt are completely. They were not different battles. , they didn't fall the same way at all, yes, and the cavalry role was there and the archers shot the horses in both battles, but they were two very different situations. So, at Agincourt, the full front cavalry charge was never intended. It was never tried. It was not delivered. right, they wanted the original battle plan to be told and, you know, they attacked them from the sides, fast and hard, break up those archers, destroy their ability to fire on a large scale or at least exhaust, you know, reduce the effectiveness of mass shooting killing and disrupting as possible. as many of them as possible from the sides where they are weak and vulnerable and then move the main force on foot and that first part just didn't work, so the English had the full power of their massive shots, which ultimately, It was really detrimental to the French advance on foot, so what is crucial about this battle is the advance of a large number of armed knights and men-at-arms on foot and what the English are doing about it at long, medium and short range. scope. range and let me say one thing about range because in our first major movie I was referring to archers shooting at close range, that's why I said I kept saying close range and you know, I realized that I have got into the habit of talking of shooting at close range, you know, talking about these things for several years and I have acquired that habit because I make a point of emphasizing that distances are shorter than we could imagine.

A longbow might launch an arrow 400 yards or whatever, but that's well beyond the maximum effective range. Believe. That's hypothetical. Well, we'll get back to that. We'll get to that. So when I have been emphasizing short range, short range, short range, I mean short range in a modern sense, I am not referring to what the

medieval

archer considered short range. The short range in the era of high-powered firearms is 150 meters, 150 meters is quite a short range. But that could well be a much longer reach for the English goalkeeper. You know, we have to determine that, so I just want to leave that condition: I'm not saying that they didn't shoot at what they considered long range.

What I'm saying is that it's shorter than we could imagine and obviously there's a lot more work to do and I'd love to be able to do more experimental work working on several different levels. We can say more about what the maximum effective range of Joe's 160-pound shuffleboard longbow is, because archers have to make decisionsabout. Archers have a limited number of these arrows, so they always have to make a judgment call. He may be able to take the arrow that far, but is he going to do anything when he gets there? Do I feel confident that when I shoot my arrow it will have the best chance of causing some damage now?

If you're shooting, you know there's a cavalry charge coming your way, and you can see across the range that those horses aren't wearing much armor, then you might want to go for the longer range. You know your arrow is losing energy the moment it leaves the bow, but is that acceptable at this or that range depending on what you're shooting at and it depends on what you're trying to accomplish? But with that range issue, my understanding is that there would have been or was some long-range shooting at the cavalry when they began to arrive. I mean, do we know for sure?

Well it seems that in the original battle lines the French and the English just sat there looking at each other for a while and no one did anything and this was fine with the French because the longer they wait the more troops arrive and they have more and more arrive. people. Henry has who he has and the longer he waits and the longer the French sit there, the more and more dangerous it becomes for him, so it was very important that the English somehow goad the French into attacking them. And what they did was literally lift sticks and advance their entire line and I think what they were doing is advancing their line to the maximum effective range of the bow.

What's that? we need, we need to work on that. They move up to that maximum effective range and start firing and at maximum effective range they may not be doing maximum damage, but it will also be enough damage to make the French go away. And the expectation of that isn't going to be ten shots a minute from every archer, you're sending one or two darts a minute or whatever, it might be enough to bother the French and make them go, you know what? "Let's take care of this." It's about making your enemy fight on your terms.

You know, if King Henry could get the French to attack him, he's deciding what they'll do. He is dictating the play of this. You know the French could have attacked them when they were still establishing. when they're placing their bets and things like that and the French could have decided to try to get ahead of them, but they didn't and they're lucky they didn't. Who decides what happens and when, and the archers have a role to play in that, so when they start shooting at the maximum effective range at the beginning of the battle, there is a certain effect they are going for, they are just trying to get to that point. of inflection. at which point the French let themselves be dictated to and leave, and then once they leave, you still have 150 meters of these guys with 35 kilos of armor moving through the thick mud, it will take them three minutes, five minutes, maybe even ten. minutes to get into ax range, that's still a long time to shoot them.

And so the first classic long-range Hollywood high bow is to harass, incite the enemy, get them to start advancing and then bring the long bows into play, as we saw in the movie with Joe, get them to fire with maximum effectiveness lethal, which you are not doing in a high shot. So the fact is that there is no

medieval

image showing an archer in a field battle shooting into the air in this period and you could say that while medieval art is not realistic it still gives you a good feeling of what artists think these things look like and we know this from the mythologization of Agincourt in modern children's books from the 19th and 20th centuries from Olivier's film, Kenneth Branagh's film, you know when an archer does that it's so iconic , You know? and it's definitive, so if they were doing it you'd see it in art even if the distances are weird and the backgrounds are weird and the armies don't show enough people, whatever the body shape is and it's just not there except when they are in sieges and they shoot people, almost then they show it, they drive when they know they are supposed to be sieges and naval, you see it, and I am okay with that, but where I am a little lost on this, the elevated shot in a field context would have uses, would have uses for bothering a body of cavalry 250 meters away, something like that just to move them from that little place there to get them a little further away or whatever they say they revolve around the current that they can't see from where they are, whatever it is, there would have been times when you would have maybe it's just not worth the arrows, maybe everything you can achieve isn't worth the expense of their valuable arrows. , so a question Joe might ask in the future, for example, is how much he can lift before it looks like he's lifting it and how far his arrows go when he does it and then how much energy he has. retained of the total potential energy of the shot.

Well, that's certainly something we have to look at: what energy is held and what momentum because momentum has a very strong relationship with penetration, yes, what energy and what momentum is held at what distances, yes, and that's one We have to re-address that and I think it motivates us to know that at some point we will do more work on the longbow ranges and we will know what we can achieve by shooting at different ranges, yes, and what decisions they are making. when they do that and that relates to knowing the speed at which they shoot and a lot of other things too.

It's interesting that you were saying that the French Knights actually passed the English lines, which meant these lines of fire, which meant that they could actually know any shot from the front, but fire from the sides and, in fact, possibly even shooting from behind, which of course leaves you much more vulnerable. At a late stage in the battle there is a suggestion in some of the French accounts that they felt they had been completely surrounded, yes, and they have not been, it is not beyond the realm of possibility, well the main thing is that if Can you imagine the English? arranged in a V shape and the French, you know, go to the center to kill Henry and the nobles, then the guys who have the wings have a lot of opportunities to shoot at the sides and some of them hide in the forest and can run around the back and shoot from behind probably at a late stage of the battle.

That would make you uncomfortable. So obviously in our first movie we're shooting the shell from the front, and frankly it comes down to a matter of timing with the shoot, what we'll do is come and take a look at the shoot. From the side I also want to say that it has to be a fact, yes and yes, I mean you were making a good point earlier about how people were, hurt, you know people were hurt. How were they injured? Since it's an answer movie, I guess my main point, you know, is the other main point I want to emphasize in all of this because when you focus on specific things like you need to, it's very easy to overemphasize what you know what you're into. you are concentrating to the exclusion of everything else and this is a very complex physical situation that we're dealing with, we have to separate it, we have to methodically test certain things, you know, so it's easy to say what if this, what if that, what if this, good.

We're working on it, but we have to be somewhat methodical about it if we don't get any of that in this movie. I want to emphasize that no one is saying that the longbow is an ineffective weapon. That's not what we're saying at all. From all the sources in Agincourt from both sides it is very clear that many French knights and men-at-arms were killed by archers who shot arrows at them and the arrows are killing them, wounding them and causing damage, that is what no one questions at all. What we're saying is that it may not be happening the way we might imagine it would happen.

We know that they are capable of killing these people even if they are wearing good equipment, so what is really going on? You know how they can walk over really good armor and that doesn't make the French stupid for wearing the armor because it would have been a lot worse if they weren't wearing it? There aren't actually that many battles in medieval history where you can show English archers shooting at people who don't have armour, but there are a couple of cases, the Battle of Stoke Field in 1487 is a good example of that where the York army has a There are many Irish fighters who don't really have any defensive armor and it's an absolute massacre, so wearing armor is a good idea although of course it's not one hundred percent protection.

What I like about this project is that we can get started. to replace some of those assumptions with some with some fact and we know it's never perfect, but we can do our best and we can do something useful, I mean especially with the practical work, you know, the practical research of, you know, weapons and armor. and medieval struggles and so on have gone places in the last 10 years that no one could have expected and when you put yourself in the practical situation you discover new things, but sometimes you can make sense of strange things in the existing evidence that were difficult to understand before, yes, and that way you make a connection and suddenly, that isolated test and this isolated test suddenly sing from the same page.

Certainly, 15 or 20 years ago, there weren't people who really shot heavy bows, and if they did shoot heavy bows, they weren't traditional English longbows. The whole style of war archery that you see in all the pictures and that Joe was exhibiting in the movie is something relatively new, so you certainly go back 20 years and that same test that we did today, even if you had the armor Even if you had us all standing there and doing the same things, it wouldn't be possible because there was no one like Joe. Right, and similarly with armor, there are a lot of people now who have a lot of experience fighting in full plate armor and that starts to give you more of a window into the perspective of the people who were actually there. 20 years ago you couldn't say, for example, that the armor the French were wearing when they advanced towards the English could be used in different ways depending on the situation and, even though configured in different ways, it might not look appreciably different from the outside. from the point of view of the artists you know who depict it, but essentially the same equipment could be used in a configuration where it weighs 20 kilos total or 35 kilos total and I know that as someone who fights with armor and a Many other people know the same: even if you change the weight of your armor by 3 kilos, it is a significant difference and changes what you can do, for how long, etc.

So our understanding of the physical environment has really been transformed through the proliferation of practical interests. And the basic story is still catching up. There are a lot of people who fight an Armor on the weekends who have a much better idea of ​​what the French advance would have felt like, but they know that they are not the people who Do you know that you are in charge of writing things professionally or yes, you know that They don't end up on You Tube movies all the time, although some of them probably do, but you know how we catch up on our research skills?

It seems like that's what this project is about. That's one of the things I really like about this is that, as many people as have seen the last movie, two and a half million or something like that, there are two and a half million heads thinking, commenting, bringing up sources, talking about things and it's opened the world to people like me who are not professional academic historians. I mean, in my last response movie I alluded that I'm just a shed guy and that we're going to go see Dr. Toby Capwell to get better answers and and the bottom line is that it's true.

I benefit from the work that you and your colleagues do in writing the books that you write and research and develop our knowledge in the whole area, so when we talk about primary sources and when people make a comment about a source that I mean, how do Should all of this really be approached from an academic point of view? Yeah, I mean, there are several different types of evidence that we can work with. I think one of the limitations of this type of historical research has been historically. that any academic or researcher has tended to work with one type of evidence, so you're a textual historian or an art historian or an archaeologist and the good ones always look at other types of evidence for color. and the perspective and context of what they're primarily concerned with, but I think it's only fairly recently that it's been known that most universities and academic bodies in general have really started to encourage interdisciplinary research where they actively come together different types of evidence and you try to build a better representation of the reality that concerns you, so you know that we have to be dynamic with the way we use the evidence and we have to be very precise about how we use the evidence, you know if you we are, yes we areworking with documents and written accounts from this eyewitness who says this happened at the Battle of Agincourt.

We have to be very careful, for example, when working with translation. Many times it is useful to work with translations, but sometimes you can get the wrong idea. If you don't compare it to the actual words the original author used, so I think precision is really important and being clear about what's in the evidence versus what you're doing with it and the hypothesis you have. have an idea of ​​what you think is going on and then you have to use evidence against it and you have to be prepared to be wrong and you have to change your idea in the face of good evidence and sometimes when you've worked through an issue For a long time, it's easy to forget to get back to the basics.

I was looking at some of Agincourt's textual sources again this morning and I was very surprised how they talk about effectiveness and that those arrows are killing people, and everyone agrees that it's a great weapon, no one disputes that. But how does it actually work and what was so effective about the way Henry V specifically was using his archers? If there are graduate students working on 15th-century sources and you find something you think is important, tell us, but don't just say it. We, oh, I read somewhere that this, you know, we need to know where our evidence comes from and that's why footnotes are important, but if you absolutely have them, we want to know about them.

I mean, I think it's important, it's especially important. for this actually because let's say we're still making these movies in five years, which would be great, we're going to look back at previous things and say "oh, we were wrong" and it's accepting when you're wrong and accepting what you're not. you know and that you can strive to improve both, but say that you are not wrong and that you know that they are all meaningless statements that you know you have. To start somewhere and as you do, as we do these test shots, we'll get better and then maybe you know and then we'll come back and try to review, but you know you have to start somewhere.

We have a few free minutes now with Dr. Toby Capwell, so let's go over some of those stupid or not so stupid questions that I've asked myself for years or heard from all my peers. about and I claimed a fact, so let's go over it in a very informal and unstructured way, so right at the end of the battle I heard that the English archers took all the prisoners and then ended up killing them, basically losing. All his rescues is a version I hear. Right, right, in the middle? Partially true. They killed some prisoners because at one point they were worried that they had so many prisoners that they could not protect them and continue fighting the battle at the same time and King Henry ordered the prisoners to be killed because it was a tenuous position initially, many of his troops refused to do it and then they killed some of them, but then they stopped and killed some of them, but they didn't kill them all, so when their troops refused to do it, presumably that's from a financial or moral point of view, isn't it? we know?

Well, I don't want to say what these people thought, but there was certainly a financial hit when you have a really valuable noble that you can sell to his family for a lot of money and then you're just going to cut his throat. I mean, if you just take away the human element completely, there's a huge financial disincentive to do this. There were no rules of war, but the English violated them that day. Or were there precedents? I mean, was it something that just wasn't done and was looked down upon, as I understand it was considered a pretty dirty day by the rest of Europe?

Well, you know, it's a fluid thing and depends on how you spin it later on a basic human level. You seem to know that it is morally reprehensible to kill unarmed people whom you have taken prisoner in good faith and I think this is certainly a level of that where medieval people would recognize that on the other hand it was a potentially desperate situation and some of These prisoners could have been giving indications that they were going to violate the prisoner capture contract by getting up and attacking them, yeah, which you're not supposed to do either.

You know that when you take a prisoner there is an agreement on both sides. You know they're going to keep you in an open prison with the agreement that you won't try to escape, so it's kind of complicated, but it still looks bad. There is no doubt that it looks bad. Pointed bets... So... this one is interesting. I'm going to tell you about this, we mentioned the word pointed stakes and you said... like you were throwing it on the ground. Now there are stories, isn't it true that archers had to carry a pointed stake? Well, again it comes down to the need to protect your archers and if you can't count on hedges to hide behind or a river or a ditch or forest or whatever, it's a good idea to take your fortification with you so that the archers At Agincourt each had a long wooden stake placed in front of them.

Now the thing about this is that I reflect on things on rainy days when I have nothing to do and I've always wondered why you see the work of art and it's always a pointy stake with the point sticking out and if you stick it in, yeah en You have a point, you take the point off and that's fine, you can carve it again, but then when you remove big chunks of wood, you have to do it with an ax and, if it's not buried so deep in swampy ground, Everything will be giving turns when you've done it with an ax or a hook, so you won't be able to sharpen them afterwards, so I've always wondered about this and the only conclusion I can come to is that you have the point that sticks into the ground and then the flat end down.

I may be the only person here who says yes, well of course it's obvious, but actually in every depiction you see it's a pointy end sticking out of the ground and I can't. look how they can achieve that. I've been worried about the idea of ​​hammering a sharp point, other than ruining the point, it's not going to be very effective and it's complicated, it's just weird to do, it doesn't seem to make sense. I've been worried, but I haven't thought about it much. You know, one has to think about the diameter of the stakes. I mean, they're not giant tree trunks, right?

Or, but how narrow can they be before they are ineffective? Yes, and really all you need is a deterrent for the cavalry and if it is inconvenient for the infantry to advance towards you, so much the better, but it is actually an obstacle, not a spear. I think that's the point in my head. I always think of it as a sharp stake sticking out of the ground and I suspect it's just an obstacle, I guess, but I have to check if we're going into this seriously. I think there are Depictions of stakes and sharp points used, but the artwork would have to be judged and this, about 100 years later, illustrates a text they were given and they make the same assumption.

I do not know how. I would investigate that because I don't know what the main evidence will be. No, but that's just one of these things. It's part of the Agincourt myth. We all know that they have sharpened the stakes and hammered the sharpened stakes. but do we really know? Yeah, I mean there's a long history of the Scots first building obstacles to use against English heavy cavalry, you know, during the Wars of Independence in the 13th and 14th centuries, and the English really have this idea of fight the way they fight because of the way they were, they said the experiences against the Scots and the Scots supposedly sharpened stakes and planted them in the ground, you know more like you know you know punji sticks or something, you have to step on them and they are More smalls. but you know, there is a sharpened stake in the repertoire, but on the other hand, if it is large, even if it is not sharpened or not, if it is projected at an angle at the level of a horse's chest or whatever, it will still be effective , it is not.

I need to be smart, yes, to do a job, you have to discourage the horse, that's the point, you just need to prevent them from crossing your line, you know, with impunity, yes. So, "reenactment," you've heard the phrase, okay, yeah, I'm a casual reenactor sitting around the fire. We all love a good story and we tell it to the people who come. The English were threatened that the French would cut off their fingers, so we greeted the French like this, unfortunately French. True, right? I don't know, I'm vaguely aware of the problems with this story... whatever it is this insulting gesture is coming from the archers that sounds like something that's not true to me it's a good story it's fun to tell at parties it's an Es a smart thing to know and that is precisely why I would be skeptical about its validity.

Move on quickly? Yes, go on, let's put that behind us. The English had so much dysentery, yes, they didn't want to stop marching that they cut their ass off from the hose so they could basically "empty their bowels", so they could go to the bathroom. on the side of the road without having to drop your pants. Completely false. Charming Very good... You disappointed me so much. Okay, can I explain... okay, it is completely false, there are some accounts of the battle that say that the archers wore their stockings down but that none of them had dysentery, this is an important part of the myth, it is a a device that is used to exaggerate the danger of the English position, the danger that they are in, they are facing it, not only are they outnumbered ten to one, but they are all sick and you know, and it just makes That whole victory is much more surprising, right, but they didn't do it because there was a real problem with dysentery and Harfleur in the siege of Harfleur and people died from it and everyone who had it was sent home, right?

TRUE? Anne Curry has the documentation we know who was sent home and the people who were sent home were all the people with dysentery, the people in the battle were the people who were not sick. Dysentery is not part of the battle, it is part of the campaign, two different things. Dysentery is more about staying in one place than being mobile. Now, that doesn't mean you can't get dysentery when you're on the go, but it does mean that bathrooms that stay in one place for a long time lack hygiene. They can't keep those people up to date on their progress in France when they could have a major battle to fight at any moment.

It's simply better to send them home and work with fewer, healthier men. We have their names. It's all written. below. Forget it. Good. Bad. That was a great story, ruined, sorry everyone. That's the point of this great story ruined by unpleasant events, but I think the reality is even more interesting. Well, the infection rate from English arrow wounds is so high that the French thought we poisoned our arrows. The theory is that the arrows were stuck in the ground, so there was mud, defecation from being in the shooting lines, and all that kind of nonsense. Have you heard that before?

I'm looking at you in the face, you haven't even heard that... I've heard things about English archers rubbing gunk on their arrows for biological warfare purposes or whatever. I think it's a stretch, I mean, maybe... I'd say go out into the world and find evidence of this, if there's evidence of it, I'd really like to know, but we can't just work on the assumption of oh yeah, they do it. . I would do it if I were there. You know. It would work. It would work, but I think they're more concerned with putting arrows in people's bodies and you know the wound is the focus if they get infected and die later, that doesn't help you in the hour or whatever of the battle.

Knowing what happens after the battle is not your immediate concern. Sorry for the joy on my face. I just thought of another one that's not even on my list. Well, I haven't read Roger Ascham in years, so I don't remember him well, but someone put up a reference saying that he put a drop of beeswax on the end of your arrow and that will make it go through armor. Modern anti-tank rounds often have some kind of washer around the head that I don't know stabilizes the head when it hits the armor, or something I frankly don't understand, I heard something similar on arrows and crossbow bolts putting a lead washer on it. or a ball of beeswax, or...

I've heard it in living history talks, but I've never seen any primary source for it, on the other hand, I've never looked it up, so I'll say no. I know, but I'm skeptical, yeah, okay. Well, thank you very much for that, Toby. I'm sorry to put you through that because there was some nonsense in there, but it's actually great because I learned things I thought I knew for sure and at least that has to be what it is. Thank you for taking the time and thank you for inviting us here at the Wallace Collection, a fantastic place, and thank you for watching.

See you soon. We have good things to come.