How Many Died at Agincourt? | The Hundred Years' War

The honest answer is that the figures are not precisely known, and probably never will be. The most useful modern estimate, based on the surviving French and English administrative records and the contemporary chronicles read critically, puts English losses at 400–600 of all ranks and French losses at 1,500–4,000 of all ranks. The disproportion — perhaps five to one — is the most striking single fact about the battle. The standard reference is Anne Curry’s Agincourt: A New History (2005) and The Battle of Agincourt: An Anatomy (2020); Clifford Rogers’ War Cruel and Sharp (2014) gives the strategic context.

The English figures

The English chroniclers reported the English dead at 100 or even 40. The figures are too low. The Gesta Henrici Quinti, the English eyewitness account, gives the number of English dead as 400, including the Duke of York (Edward, Duke of York, the king’s cousin), the Earl of Suffolk, and a small number of bannerets and knights. The most reliable modern estimate clusters between 400 and 600, of whom the great majority were longbowmen — the soldiers the chronicles were least interested in counting. The number of English wounded is not recorded, and the English army entered the battle perhaps 6,000 strong (Curry’s recent estimate), so the casualty rate was between seven and ten per cent.

The 400–600 figure is not the figure in Shakespeare, who took the inflated chronicler tradition. It is the figure consistent with the administrative records of the English paymaster and with the Gesta Henrici Quinti.

The French figures

The English chronicles reported the French dead at 10,000, even 15,000. The French chronicles, in particular the Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denis and Enguerrand de Monstrelet, reported higher figures still. The figures are too high. The modern estimate, of 1,500–4,000 French dead, is based on the size of the French army (perhaps 12,000–18,000), the duration of the engagement (perhaps five hours of close fighting), the terrain (narrow front, muddy ground), and the comparative losses in similar actions of the period.

What the chronicles are unanimous about is the qualitative composition of the French dead. A striking proportion of the higher French nobility was killed. The Constable Charles d’Albret, the Dukes of Alençon and Brabant, the Counts of Nevers, Vaudemont, and Marle, the Admiral of France, the master of the crossbowmen — the military leadership of France in 1415 was, in a single afternoon, largely annihilated. The list of those killed reads like an almanac of the great houses of France.

The three peers

Three French peers of the realm were killed at Agincourt. The Duke of Alençon, the Duke of Brabant (whose lands were in the Low Countries), and the Count of Nevers (the brother of the Duke of Burgundy, and one of the principal architects of the French strategy). All three were members of the great dynasties that had ruled the politics of northern France for two centuries. Their deaths created a vacuum in the French leadership that took a generation to fill. The Duke of Bar, often listed in older popular accounts as a casualty of Agincourt, was not killed at Agincourt; he survived the battle and died in 1430 in Lorraine.

The Constable d’Albret

Charles d’Albret, the constable of France, was killed at Agincourt. He had argued, on the morning of 25 October 1415, for a defensive strategy — the French should not give battle, the English should be allowed to march to Calais, the war should be continued by attrition. The dukes of Alençon and Bar, and the count of Nevers, had pressed for an attack. The king, in one of the worst tactical decisions of the war, gave way to the hawks. The constable died fighting a rearguard action with the remnants of the French second division; the body was found the next day stripped of its armour and jewels.

The lord’s ransom of the prisoners

The strangest feature of the battle, and the most thoroughly studied, is the killing of the French prisoners. The Gesta Henrici Quinti records that, on Henry’s order, the French prisoners — perhaps several hundred men-at-arms of the higher ranks, who had surrendered and were being held under guard — were put to death in the hour after the third French attack was beaten off. The chronicle gives no clear reason. The most plausible reconstructions — fear of a French relief, fear of a renewed attack, the suspicion of a plot among the prisoners — are treated at length by Anne Curry in The Battle of Agincourt: An Anatomy (2020). The killing of the prisoners is, in any reading, the episode that has most darkened the English reputation from that day to this.

Why the disproportion

The disproportion in casualties is the result of three structural advantages on the English side. The narrowness of the battlefield, between two woods, forced the French to attack in successive columns and neutralised their numerical superiority. The mud, after a wet autumn, made the mounted charge impossible and slowed the French advance to a walk. And the English longbow, fired in disciplined volleys into the massed French, broke each attack before it could close with the English line. The English men-at-arms, dismounted and protected by sharpened stakes, were the anvil; the longbowmen were the hammer. The combination, in the conditions of 25 October 1415, was devastating.

The historiographical argument

The casualty figures have been debated for six centuries. The English tradition, from the Gesta Henrici Quinti through Holinshed and Hall to Shakespeare, exaggerated French losses to flatter the king. The French tradition, from the Religieux de Saint-Denis through Monstrelet, did the same for political reasons of its own. The modern critical reading, which is Anne Curry’s, treats the chronicles as rhetorical documents rather than statistical ones and tries to recover the underlying reality. The 400–600 and 1,500–4,000 figures are not exact, but they are the best we have.

Significance

The disproportion at Agincourt is the disproportion that made the conquest of Normandy in 1417–1419 and the Treaty of Troyes in 1420 possible. The English did not, after Agincourt, capture another major French army, but the political consequences of the killing of the French leadership were, in their way, more important. The duchy of Normandy was conquered piecemeal over the next three years; the French government was forced into the political compromises of Troyes; the Dauphin was disinherited. Agincourt was not the only reason any of this happened, but it was the proximate reason.