The Battle of Patay: Agincourt Avenged

The Battle of Patay: Agincourt Avenged

The following post is by guest contributor Dan McEwen, a Canadian novelist [A Force of Nature] and former corporate wordsmith who ventures into the pages of history with endless fascination.

It’s 1415, the 78th year of the 100 Year’s War. On October 25th, a sick and starving English army confronts a larger, heavily-armored French force on a grassy slope near an obscure French village named Agincourt. Before the sun sets, humble English longbowmen wipe out the cream of French knighthood in a David and Goliath contest that turns centuries of military dogma on its ear. Henry is lionized as the plucky warrior-king; the French nobility goes down in infamy as arrogant fools.  

The muddy slug-fest known as The Battle of Agincourt has taken its place in the national psyche of the English, along with the likes of Trafalgar, Waterloo, and El Alamein. William Shakespeare’s “band of brothers” version of the battle in Henry 5th, his tenth and last play about English monarchs set the tone for future recitations of the tale. This version was faithfully repeated in actor/director Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 cinematic interpretation of the play and more recently in the 2019 Netflix film The King featuring Dune star Timothée Chalamet in the title role.  

For the French, however, there’s a sequel. Flash forward fourteen years. Henry is long dead of dysentery. French resistance to the English presence has exploded into open rebellion led by, of all things, a teenaged girl!

It’s June 18th, 1429 and a fragmented English army is on the run in the Loire Valley after being soundly drubbed just a day earlier. Despite their victory, the timid French generals dithered about what to do next. A nineteen-year-old Joan of Arc settles the dispute by dispatching a force of 1,500 cavalrymen to locate the English while she follows with the main army. Call it dumb luck or Fate but around 2:00 pm, near another obscure French village named Patay, 200 of these scouts inadvertently flush a stag out onto the road ahead of them. Instead of retreating back into the forest, the stag bolts up the road and over a hill. Eager to put venison on the dinner menu, the scouts give chase. 

The battle of Patay is on the horizon.

On the other side of the hill, English archers on the fringe of their army spot this same deer bounding towards them and make the same dining plan. Whooping their usual chorus of hunting cries, they hurried to notch their bows. Except their shouts alerted the oncoming French scouts who promptly sound the alarm to the whole cavalry. The fate of the stag remains unknown. 

What is known is that the next sixty minutes were unquestionably not England’s finest hour. The commanders, Sir John Fastolf and John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury scurried about like mother hens, gathering their scattered units into formations. Shrewsbury stations his 5,000 archers astride the road in the path of the French; Fastolf deploys his infantry along a ridge to the rear in support. As always, the English bowmen begin planting pointed stakes in front of their position as their sole protection against an oncoming enemy.  

But the French cavalry was quicker to assemble and 1,500 armed knights charged into the unprepared and unprotected archers from both flanks. Just as at Agincourt, a battle descended in a massacre. Despite heroic efforts to rally his men, Fastolf’s infantry broke and ran, deserting the bowman. 2,500 would be killed. Talbot was captured and held for ransom. The French army redeemed its pride at the cost of fewer than 100 casualties.

After negotiating his release from captivity, an outraged Talbot returned to England and publicly accused Fastolf of deserting his comrades on the field of battle, a charge Fastolf hotly denied. Indeed, a formal inquiry eventually cleared him of the charge but the fact remained the wholesale slaughter of its army was a loss from which England would never fully recover.