Titans of History

HENRY V

1387–1422

Too famous to live long.

Duke of Bedford

On August 31, 1422, at Bois de Vincennes outside Paris, Henry V of England succumbed to the grim fate of so many of his soldiers and died of “camp fever”—most likely dysentery. Shakespeare’s Young Prince Hal was just thirty-four years old and had succeeded his father to the English throne only nine years earlier. Yet Henry was young in years, not in experience. Indeed, such were the accomplishments of his brief life that he has been described by one modern historian as “the greatest man that ever ruled England.”

When Henry came to the throne in 1413, the country had been riven for decades by dynastic warfare: his father Henry IV—Henry Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt—had seized the throne in 1399 from his cousin, Richard II. Henry IV spent the early years of his reign at war and on the defensive, suppressing rebellions by the Percy family and the Welsh. His son was given independent commands in these campaigns and soon distinguished himself. In one battle, the young prince was grievously wounded with an arrow that penetrated and broke off deep in his face. He was miraculously saved by an ingenious surgeon who invented a contraption that pulled the arrow out, not through its entry wound but through the neck. Henry recovered.

During the last years of his father’s reign, king and prince competed for power and almost came to conflict. On succeeding in 1413 it became clear how exceptional the new young king was: he was profoundly pious and religious, believing in his sacred mission, but also generous-spirited, energetic, highly intelligent, brave and gifted as a military planner as well as a general. Young Henry V, offering hope of a clean break with the past, rapidly set about doing his all to unite the country. A “very English Englishman” himself, he aimed to nurture a sense of nationhood and national identity, abandoning the usual practices of his predecessors and reading and writing in English rather than in French. Like his predecessors in the Hundred Year War, he believed himself to be the rightful king of France.

Just before he set off for France, he uncovered an aristocratic conspiracy against himself: he ruthlessly crushed the so-called Southampton Plot, executing Henry, Baron Scrope and his cousin the earl of Cambridge. Nothing could interfere with Henry’s solemn war.

Henry set sail for France in August 1415 with a plan to capture a number of strategically placed towns in northern France that could be garrisoned and used as footholds for further conquests. By the end of September he had succeeded in taking the port of Harfleur, but as his army had already been severely depleted by disease, he decided to return to England to regroup. On October 25 the English army of around 6000 found its path to Calais blocked near Agincourt by a far superior French force. Outnumbered by at least three to one, the thin English line was drawn up in a strong defensive position, forming a funnel with trees on either flank and several large groups of archers positioned along the line. When the French knights, on horseback and wearing heavy armor, finally advanced, they found themselves increasingly constricted and caught in a deadly hail of arrows. Laying down their bows after the initial volleys, the English longbowmen then piled into the French, now hopelessly crushed together and in total confusion, and inflicted horrendous casualties. Henry’s great victory was thus also the triumph of the powerful longbow of the English archers (many of them from Cheshire), whose sustained barrage of arrows was, in its terrifying and murderous way, the medieval equivalent of the machine gun.

Over the next few years, inspired by the leadership of their charismatic and dynamic young king, the English army rampaged through northern France, inflicting one devastating blow after another on the disorganized and divided French. Buoyed up by his successes, by 1420 Henry was in a position to impose a severe settlement on his adversaries, and according to the terms of the Treaty of Troyes the ailing French king Charles VI accepted Henry as his regent and future heir. Early death prevented Henry from fully exploiting his victories, but he was already guaranteed immortality as one of the greatest heroes that England has produced.

Henry’s victory brought France to its knees, and much of it under English control, but he wanted not just the restoration of the old Angevin empire but the throne of France itself. In 1417, he captured Rouen. The murder of the duke of Burgundy by its powerful Armagnac faction at the French court pushed the Burgundians into alliance with Henry and this, along with his military success, was decisive. The French signed the Treaty of Troyes in 1420: Henry became regent of France with the right of succession to the French throne and he married the French princess Catherine, with whom he had a an heir, the future Henry VI. The Dauphin of France fought on against Henry, killing his brother the duke of Clarence in battle in 1421, but the next year, Henry captured Meaux. It seemed likely that Henry V would indeed add the crown of France to that of England and establish an Anglo-French empire with his Anglo-French baby son as heir. Instead he died young and unexpectedly, leaving a baby heir and his brothers in control. Of these, the duke of Bedford won remarkable victories in France—though Orleans was saved with the help of the Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc.

The child-king Henry VI was crowned king of France in Paris but there was a deep problem on the English side: Henry VI lacked any of the characteristics necessary for medieval kingship, suffering long periods of mental illness. Henry V’s French conquests were lost—and ultimately England was lost too in the dynastic civil conflict the War of the Roses. Henry VI was murdered in the tower of London in 1471.