Agincourt

Agincourt examines Henry V’s 1415 invasion of France from the siege of Harfleur to the English victory on 25 October. Michael Livingston follows an army weakened by disease and casualties as it marched towards Calais while a much larger French force attempted to block its route. Surviving plans, chronicles and administrative records are used to reassess the decisions of Henry V, the French commanders and the troops who fought in constricted, rain-soaked ground.

Livingston challenges elements of the conventional battlefield reconstruction, including assumptions about the exact site and the deployment of the armies. He also considers how Shakespeare, national memory and later military history transformed the engagement into a story of heroic inevitability. The book restores uncertainty to the campaign, explaining why English survival was never guaranteed and why the scale of the French defeat requires more than a simple account of longbows defeating armoured knights.