‘One of the first things to note about our surviving sources for the battle of Agincourt (or Azincourt), fought on October 25th, 1415, is just how many of them there are. In a way, this is unsurprising since it was (and is) one of the most celebrated (and unexpected) victories in English history. And yet, does this plethora of sources actually allow us to get any close to what actually happened at the battle? As historians, we are blessed with a multitude of accounts from differing perspectives on the battle – from eyewitnesses on both sides, writers who were close to the participants of the battle, all the way through to later chroniclers and analysts. The sheer abundance of our sources for the battle lead to problems of their own, however, (and ones we don’t usually encounter when we rely on a single or only a few accounts for our information).
Our sources contain contradictions, omissions, biases and all sorts of entanglements based on contemporary religious perspectives, contemporary (and later) political agendas as well as the influences of other interpersonal or factional conflicts, all of which need to be sorted out to understand the battle; that is if such factors ever can be sorted or understood at more than 600 years’ remove. Some valuable sources have often been overlooked or at least not utilised to their full potential while other, perhaps less reliable, accounts have, for various reasons, become the dominant versions of the battle in subsequent historical analyses. Not to mention the version provided by popular culture and myth which actually began soon after the battle. It is, unsurprisingly, a complex problem. Nonetheless, exploring our sources for this most famous of battles is worthwhile.’
This episode was written by Murray Dahm.
Murray is an ancient and medieval military historian from New Zealand, living in Australia. He has written more than 100 articles on various aspects of ancient and medieval military history and other historical topics from all periods. He is the author of Macedonian Phalangite vs Persian Warrior, Athenian Hoplite vs Spartan Hoplite and Leuctra 371 BC, all from Osprey Publishing. He is a regular on the Ancient Warfare Podcast.