Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: Battles, in Churchill's words, are "the principal milestones of secular history."Academic historians disagree, dismissing battle history as event focused and abandoning it to popular writers.Still, even the advanced scholar will admit that some battles compel attention.Thermopylae, Hastings, Gettysburg, Stalingrad: their names alone evoke powerful cultural memories.Any such list surely includes Agincourt, so iconic that Charles Schulz could have his beloved Snoopy turn to its memory for courage as he consulted a veterinarian.Why does this distant triumph in a long-lost war serve to instill courage and inspire martial ardor?No better person could address this question than Anne Curry, whose expertise assures us an authoritative overview in this learned yet accessible book.As military history it offers little that is new to specialists; its real value lies in its historiographic approach.It offers both the accomplished scholar and the beginning student of history an invaluable case study in the evolution of historical scholarship, popular memory, and national mythology.This timely work, appearing on the 600th anniversary of the battle, begins by explaining the complicated politics of this moment in the Hundred Years' War, when an insecure Lancastrian monarch opportunistically diverted English attention abroad.Henry V launched an invasion of a kingdom rendered vulnerable by the madness of Charles VI and murderous civil strife between the Dukes of Burgundy and Orleans.Curry draws on her own groundbreaking research into pay records, muster rolls, ships' logs, and tax levies to document the mobilization and transport of the army that captured Harfleur before traversing the north of France en route to Calais.Henry V's purpose in that risky passage remains uncertain but the end result was the great victory at Agincourt.Curry's account of the battle is striking both in its clarity and its generosity as she acknowledges and explains how she differs with colleagues on such contentious issues as the location of the battlefield, the disposition and size of forces engaged, and the penetrating power of the longbow.While celebrating Henry's tactical brilliance regarding his deployment of the archers as the crucial battlefield decision, she admits his responsibility in the explicable but in no way heroic massacre of the prisoners in the end stages of the encounter.
Source: Renaissance Quarterly
DOI: 10.1086/690381
Author: Paul Solon
Institution: Macalester College
Language: English
Subfield: Classics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,550
OpenAlex ID: W2557777371