Agincourt’s First World War Legacy

How was the 500th anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt celebrated? An inspection of the British Newspaper Archive for October 1915 provides several answers, but first we should look back to August 1914 and the opening of the Great War, when a short story by Arthur Machen entitled The Bowmen was published in the Evening News. Ostensibly, it was about the Battle of Mons, when 80,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) encountered approximately 300,000 Germans around 70 miles from the village of Azincourt in Picardy. The story was that the British were assisted by a ghostly line of figures that appeared on the horizon. These were the bowmen of Agincourt, arriving to help their beleaguered descendants, and they duly proceeded to shoot the Germans down in droves. Machen's story was pure fiction, but many readers took it for reportage and, as it was told and retold, it became the foundation for the legend of the Angels of Mons.

There was nothing else quite like Machen's story in 1915; but many newspapers did mention Agincourt in one way or another, especially in the anniversary month of October. The Yorkshire Evening Post for 1 October, the Wells Journal for 15 October, and the Aberdeen Weekly Journal for October 29th informed their readers that ‘October is above all others the month of battle’ and bracketed Agincourt with Hastings, Sebastopol, Trafalgar, Edgehill and Balaclava. On 1 October the Dundee Courier went further, pointing out that it was in the month of October that other less well-known battles had taken place, involving Italian, French, Spanish, Russian and Prussian forces. The Burnley News published a word puzzle on 30 October ('My first is in Utrecht etc) to which the solution was T.R.A.F.A.L.G.A.R.

Journalists seem to have regarded Shakespeare's version of events in his play Henry V (1599) as history as well as drama and several papers reproduced extracts from Henry's St Crispin's Day speech; in fact the Cheltenham Looker-On for 30 October reproduced the whole of it. That same day, the Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald repeated the myth that St Crispin, the patron saint of shoemakers, came from Soissons, but that (following his martyrdom) his bones had been washed ashore on Romney Marsh. In the main the press was not interested in historical controversies, but the Cornhill Magazine for October 1915 carried an article by Sir Herbert Maxwell (1845-1937), who was a Scottish essayist and novelist and a former MP, entitled The Campaign of Agincourt. This claimed that: ‘The Battle of Agincourt is memorable as the first recorded instance of the success of line formation against column.’ At the same time, there was a reference in the Birmingham Daily Post (26 October) to the importance of the longbow in securing the victory and some discussion in the Derby Daily Telegraph (30 October) of the size of Henry V's army. This seems to have been in response to a German critic's suggestion that the English were ‘crowing’ at the expense of their French allies in respect of the 500th anniversary, an allegation which the newspaper hotly refuted.

Two papers – the Dundee Evening Telegraph (14 October) and the Reading Mercury (16 October) – summarised Maxwell's article and noted that the campaign had been a demonstration of humanity, since Henry V had issued orders that, while on the march, none of his troops should molest the French peasantry. Nevertheless, in the years before 1914, the British had been lulled into a false sense of security: ‘A year ago we were so simple as to believe that men had become more humane than their forefathers and that means had been devised at The Hague and elsewhere to purge even war of the worst of its horrors.’ This was, of course, a pointed reminder to readers that the Germans had committed atrocities in occupied Belgium and France. The English had shown that there was a better way to make war, even in medieval times.

The history of Henry V’s great victory was certainly used to boost morale and specifically to support the drive to recruit more men for the titanic struggle on the Western Front. The old BEF had been virtually wiped out in 1914, and Kitchener's New Army was still being raised, but this had to be done on a voluntary basis, since conscription was not introduced until 1916. Accordingly, the government had to take every opportunity to encourage able-bodied men to enlist. On Saturday, 2 October 1915 the Liverpool Echo reported that Lewis Waller, who was a distinguished actor-manager, the Laurence Olivier of his day, had participated in a ‘stirring call for recruits' and made a 'dramatic speech' on the flags of the Liverpool Exchange. Waller had treated his audience to patriotic verse from several poets and sources, but the highlight had been his rendition of both great speeches from Henry V: the St Crispin's Day speech and that made to the troops before the walls of Harfleur: ‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends.’

The anniversary and fifth centenary of the battle – October 25th – fell on a Monday. The Hull Daily Mail summarised the main features of the Battle of Agincourt: the English had been outnumbered, but the French generals had committed the most basic of tactical errors; the victory was won by the archers; and ‘Henry V was a knightly conqueror, and used his victory mercifully.’ The Liverpool Daily Post and the Evening Despatch made it clear that, while they strongly approved of the heroism displayed by the English soldier, they were equally disapproving of Henry V’s conduct in starting the war in the first place, in pursuit of a ‘futile’ claim to the French crown. The Birmingham Daily Mail reported that George V had issued an appeal the previous Saturday in which he asked ‘men of all classes’ to come forward voluntarily. The paper then proceeded to issue its own appeal: the armies of George V were now engaged in a struggle on the same ground over which Henry V had fought; the king was still leading the nation; and the modern army was as ready to win a great and glorious victory on the field of Flanders as its medieval predecessor; but, in order to repeat the old success, it was now necessary to call for the help of ‘the whole manhood of the nation.’

The Times of London printed long lists of the dead and wounded from the Battle of Loos, but it also reproduced the St Crispin’s Day speech and commented on it in a leading article:

Five hundred years have come and gone today since England won the last and greatest of her medieval victories on foreign soil. This is the day of Agincourt, when Henry V, with his way-worn and half-famished band of Englishmen, attacked and put to utter rout the vast host that barred their way to Calais and the sea ... [England] has yet greater wars today, and her sons again stand embattled in the very fields where the noble Plantagenet with his ‘band of brothers’ snatched overwhelming victory from the very jaws of disaster ... ‘Every subject’s duty is the king’s’ is the keynote of [Shakespeare’s] play, and in none is the sense of duty more strongly portrayed than in the King himself.

The writer drew a further parallel between the events of 1415 and 1915.

[The French] thought the English force ‘a contemptible little army’, as they had thought it at Crécy and Poitiers and as others have affected to think since.

The Birmingham Daily Post of Tuesday, 26 October 1915 reported that, on the previous day, the Postmaster General, Mr Herbert Samuel, had addressed a crowd of postal workers at the General Post Office in London. He told them that he had written to every one of his employees, asking him to come forward. He said he was aware that some people said that every man who responded ‘was to be regarded as a doomed man’; but this was not so. It was true that 43,600 postal workers had already volunteered for the Front and that 1,500 of these had already fallen; but this in turn meant that 42,100 had not fallen! And, in any case, ‘it was the custom of British people to tread the path of honour and duty, no matter what perils may surround it.’ They should all reflect on the fact that 25 October 1915 was the 500th anniversary of ‘the great Battle of Agincourt’; the same spirit which inspired Henry V and his men was now abroad. Moreover, ‘we had a greater cause to fight for now, for the campaign of Agincourt was, after all, a war of adventure and conquest.’

My grandfather, Arthur Cooper, worked for the Post Office in Liverpool in October 1915 and would certainly have been one of those who received a letter from Herbert Samuel. He might also have witnessed the formidable Lewis Waller in full flow. Arthur was a married man, with three children, the youngest of whom was my father, born in August 1915; but he nonetheless volunteered for the army on 1 December, so it is not impossible that he was influenced by these appeals to the spirit of Agincourt. My aunt told me, many years later, that he had volunteered because he felt it was no longer right to stand by while others were dying for their country.

But, perhaps unfortunately, there is also a more prosaic explanation. My grandfather's enlistment in December 1915 may well be explained by his position as a married man with children. In his book Kitchener's Army (2007), the historian Peter Simkins explains that in July 1915, the National Registration Bill had been enacted, and a census was taken on 15 August (the day my father was born). This provided the authorities with a complete record of the number and distribution of men in the country. This was immediately followed by ‘the Derby scheme’, which involved a personal canvass of every man between the ages of 18 and 41 whose name was on the register, asking that he enlist voluntarily on the basis that the youngest married men would not be summoned until all age groups of single men had been called up. The prime minister (under pressure to introduce full conscription, but reluctant to do so) then gave a guarantee to the married men. On 11 November, the author of the scheme, Lord Derby, whose family seat was at Knowsley in Liverpool, repeated the guarantee. The result was quite remarkable: the recruiting offices were overwhelmed. The Derby Scheme was originally due to end on 30 November, but the closing date was extended to 11 December. I think this almost certainly explains why Arthur Cooper decided to enlist on 11 December, though of course, the spirit of Agincourt may also have been at work.

My grandfather had effectively been assured that, if he enlisted immediately on a voluntary basis, he would not be sent to the front until all the unmarried men had been conscripted. It is surely not without significance that, when he enlisted in the King's Liverpool Regiment, he was immediately relegated to reserve and that he was not called up for active service until 1918. Soon afterwards he was sent to the front as part of the desperate efforts to resist the enormous and almost successful German spring offensive, the Kaiserschlacht. He was killed within a fortnight of being sent to France, and his body was never found.

Stephen Cooper is a retired solicitor and a historian.