ABSTRACT
Whatever the numerical composition of a fighting force, if it is to be effective, it must be effectively armed. In the historical battle of Agincourt in 1415, the legendary status of Henry V was established on the field of the battle by his canny deployment of archers on foot against the enemy's mounted forces. The King, only twenty-eight years old and himself on foot in the thick of his battle line, famously directed his archers to drive in pointed stakes before they began shooting a hailstorm of 80,000 arrows a minute into the advancing French cavalry. Eight thousand tightly-packed French men-at-arms marched into a blizzard of arrows and their cavalry (impeded by the stakes driven into the ground at the start of battle and their horses maddened by arrows) collided with Henry's line of archers, who now took up swords. The first block of French men-at-arms were driven back into the second block, and knights were crushed to death in the stampede. Wonderfully, as Shakespeare has it, the French army of 60,000 had been vanquished by a 'poor and starved band' of 'husks of men', with 'Scarce blood enough in all their sickly veins/To give each naked curtalaxe a stain' (HVIV ii 16, 18, 20-21). Henry, with his characteristic mixture of hubris and humility (so reminiscent of Essex), on this occasion gives the glory to God, rather than to the skill of his own archers and the tactical ruse of the stakes.
