Was King Henry V REALLY a ‘warmonger’? Historian Dominic Sandbrook defends ‘hero’ 15th century monarch who won victory at Agincourt after he was called ‘nasty’ by comedian David Mitchell

The Battle of Agincourt occurred on October 25, 1415. 

Newly crowned as King of England, Henry V, then 27, ventured across the channel to France where the English crown owned land. 

The warrior ruler excited the medieval parliament of the day and funds flooded in to finance a war effort to tackle ‘the old enemy’.

Initially, the invasion was met with disaster when thousands of troops died of dysentery at the siege of Harfleur. 

He turned his forces around and marched on Calais, before being blocked by a French army at Arras. 

It is thought by some that an army several times the size of Henry’s was facing the English. 

Henry was presented with an option to avoid what looked like a slaughter of thousands of Englishmen — give up his lands in France and there will be no fighting. 

This, Henry knew, would undermine his new found authority and infuriate those across the channel in England and was not an option. 

Despite overwhelming odds, the Englishmen fought the French. 

The French were systematically picked off by longbows, with Henry refusing to give in to demands to give up his French lands in exchange for no fighting.

Geographical restraints of the battlefield meant that the French advanced into a barrage of arrows, with horses and men losing their lives. 

The swelling mass of cadavers made it impossible for reinforcements to advance the front line.

With no mercy given shown, no quarter given, the French nobility were massacred on their own turf by a foreign ruler. 

The battle was said to have been fought ‘for England, Harry and St George’ and ranks atop any list of English military victories, alongside iconic moments such as the battles of Waterloo and Trafalgar. 

Agincourt’s impact was profound.

The French aligned with the English, Henry V was recognised as heir to the French throne and received a hero’s welcome upon return home. 

France’s Charles the Mad acknowledged him as heir, he wed his daughter, and five years later Henry entered Paris after the French capitulated and signed the Treaty of Troyes.

Despite bringing England back to the heights of the bygone eras of Henry II and Edward II he died only seven years after Agincourt from dysentry in August 1422.

The French were systematically picked off by the longbows, with Henry refusing to give in to demands to give up his french lands in exchange for no fighting