24 Hours at Agincourt

Agincourt was an astonishing clash of arms, a pivotal moment in the Hundred Years War and the history of warfare in general. In August 1415, King Henry V claimed the throne of France and landed an army in Normandy. Two months later, outside the small village of Agincourt in Picardy, he was preparing for certain defeat. On 25 October his exhausted, starving and ailing troops faced a far larger French army, whose soldiers were fresh for combat and determined to destroy their opponents. But what was to take place in the following 24 hours, it seemed only the miraculous intervention of God could explain. Interlacing eyewitness accounts, background chronicle and documentary sources with a new interpretation of the battle's onset, acclaimed military historian Michael Jones takes the reader into the heart of this extraordinary feat of arms. He brings the long bowmen and knights to life, portrays the dilemmas of the commanders and shows the brutal reality on the ground, as archers seized swords, daggers and even mallets to beat their opponents, and heavily armoured men-at-arms sank into knee-deep mud in a bloody fight that astounded the courts of Europe.