The Battle of Agincourt, a major English victory in the Hundred Years' War, will have its 600th anniversary on October 25th, 2015, but they had actually landed in August.
How big was the fleet that carried the army? Henry V’s naval fleet, used to transport troops, was much smaller than previously thought, according to a historian.
Dr. Craig Lambert from the University of Southampton examined the naval preparations which allowed Henry V’s army to travel from England to France, using English exchequer rolls in the National Archives at Kew and other sources. Lambert has concluded Henry had a fleet of ships less than half the size of 1500 ships listed in previous estimates - only around 650. It also was not formed primarily of foreign vessels, as other historians have said.
Henry V’s fleet slipped out of the Solent on 11 August 1415 and headed to the Chef de Caux (near modern day Le Havre) – carrying 12,000 men, including the King himself onboard his ship the Trinite Roiale. They were wracked by disease and casualties. Two months later Henry V went once more into the breach with his band of brothers. On a muddy farmer's field, badly outnumbered, the English archers decimated the heavily armored French knights, the elite of French nobility. In 1420 the English monarch was recognized as heir to the French throne and the regent of France.
Lambert says, “Historians have largely ignored the maritime operations for the transfer of Henry’s army, with the story of Agincourt dominated by analyses of the campaign and the battle. With my paper, I wanted to give a clearer picture of the process of transporting the troops and the scale of the operation involved.”
The findings will be presented at the conference War on Land and Sea July 31st to August 3rd.
