Shakespeare’s play underlines the vice-like grip Agincourt has always held on the English imagination. The conquest of Normandy took five years to achieve, but four of the five acts of Henry V play themselves out over barely a dozen weeks. Henry set sail from Southampton on 11 August 1415, and fought at Agincourt on 24 October. Not until 1420 did he seal his succession at Troyes. Shakespeare’s Chorus glasses neatly over the intervening passage of years, giving the impression that conquest followed on immediately from Henry’s victory at Agincourt.

The irony is that Agincourt was a strategic fiasco. Henry had captured Harfleur, and then embarked on a near suicidal march to Calais. His army was blocked at the Somme, and had to journey inland to find a crossing point. The delay bought the French army enough time to intercept the English, and force them into a battle they were sure to lose. Henry’s invasion force of 10,000 had dwindled to a band of 5,000 desperate, exhausted men. Wracked by hunger and dysentery, they had marched 250 miles in seventeen days, and now they faced an army that outnumbered them by at least three to one.

Facing each other across 1,000 yards of knee-high mud, neither army would commit to a first move. Finally seizing the initiative, Henry advanced his men to within 250 yards of the French lines. The French cavalry had a golden opportunity to charge, as the English archers drove their stakes into the soft ground, their backs exposed directly to the ranks of the enemy.

But they hesitated. It cost them dearly: now they were inside longbow range. Sir Thomas Erpingham gave the order to fire. The sky turned black with English arrows and the French cavalry became engulfed in a sea of mud, hemmed in by the massed ranks of their own footsoldiers. Henry carried the day. His victory transformed public opinion, and laid solid political foundations for the ensuing invasion.

Henry’s final achievement was titanic. Not since 1066 had Europe seen such wholesale occupation of a neighbouring territory. Undoubtedly, a great part of this impossible feat lay down to Henry himself. Like Alexander, his crimes and his greatness flew before him, creating an awesome reputation of near invulnerability that cowed successive towns and cities in its wake.

Just as important as the King was the military machine that had moulded him. Companies fought under captains and bannerets, combining into units led by noble commanders. The system fostered a level of social cohesion unknown to French society: the “good yeomen” of England made up a highly trained, exceedingly well-equipped fighting force; the French nobles feared to arm their “superfluous lackeys and peasants”.

Still, the conquest of Normandy was a brief and ultimately fruitless triumph. One by one, all of Henry’s victories and conquests were reversed over the next three decades. In the long run, he bequeathed little more to his nation than a gripping play, and a two-fingered gesture of disrespect towards our long-suffering French cousins.

Rob Clother, 59th Student Group