Saint Crispin's Day, 1415 and 1854

One is a battle still being fought.  Heh.  And snarked, based on the comments in the post above this one.  Theo Spark, at Last of the Few, notes that today , "...we smacked the crap out of the French at Agincourt and the Light Brigade rode into history at Balaclava and took the Russian Guns."

The early winners, Henry the V and his Army - here, the words Shakespeare put in Henry's mouth:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

The losers?  And *still* pissed about it?  Constable of France Charles d'Albret and a bunch of panties-in-a-twist modern-day French historians who accuse the English of war crimes, imposing a modern sensibility what was a much more brutal time in the history of the conduct of war.

Exactly 593 years after King Henry V's legendary victory, a revisionist conference will be held at the scene of the triumph.

Academics will suggest that the extent of the feat of arms was massively exaggerated, with claims that the English were hugely outnumbered a lie.

More controversially still, they will say that the foreign invaders used numerous underhand tactics against an honourable enemy.

These included burning prisoners to death and setting 40 bloodthirsty royal bodyguards on to a single Gallic nobleman who had surrendered.

'There's been a distortion of the facts and this conference will attempt to set the record straight,' said Christophe Gilliot, a distinguished French historian who is director of the Medieval History Museum in Agincourt, where the conference will take place.

'We have historians arriving from all over France, and all will produce hard facts concerning the battle, rather than rumours and speculation.

'At the very least the English forces acted dishonourably. The middle ages were a very violent time, of course, but some might accuse the English of acting like what might now be called war criminals.'

No doubt there will be calls for reparations. 

I'm all for correcting the historical record, actually.  I've never been one to accept the contemporary chronicler's numbers as gospel.  They were far more Public Affairs people than they were historians as we understand the term.  Of course, I'm not one to necessarily accept the bean-counter's numbers, either, as Professor Curry did.  The truth, I rather suspect, lies somewhere in the muddle.  But it's bemusing to watch serious people get all twitchy and moralizing when applying today's standards to people from a 20 generation remove.  H/t, CAPT H.



Now, the 1854 edition of Saint Crispin's Day didn't go so well for the British participants, as noted by Alfred, Lord Tennyson:

Charging an army while
All the world wonder’d:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro’ the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel’d from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter’d & sunder’d.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley’d and thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro’ the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.
 

If you'd like all the words to both bits of literature, go visit Jules Crittenden..

You want stuff on the naval battles today - go see Neptunus Lex and CDR Salamander.