October 25th: Saint Crispin’s Day
1415: An English army under the command of King Henry V decisively defeats a larger and better equipped French army at the Battle of Agincourt. The battle is notable for the effective use of English longbows and the high number of casualties among the French nobles who fought there. It was the central scene in William Shakespeare’s play Henry V:
“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 accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s Day.”
1854: In a crucial decision during the Crimean War, FizRoy Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan, orders an unnecessary attack on Russian positions of unknown strength. It lead to the debacle of the Charge of the Light Brigade. The battle is best remembered Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem:
‘Forward, the Light Brigade!’
Was there a man dismay’d ?
Not tho’ the soldier knew
Some one had blunder’d:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley’d & thunder’d;
Storm’d at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred
1881: Birth of Pablo Picasso
1917: A Russian mob, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and his Bolsheviks, storms and captures Tsar Nicholas II’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, thus creating the opening battle of the “October Revolution” phase of the larger Russian Revolution.
1944: WWII Pacific – Naval Battle of Leyte Gulf, Day 3:
1) Battle of Suriago Strait. The world’s final all-gun naval battle, where Rear Admiral Jesse Oldendorf positioned himself at the northern end of the passage with a massive blocking formation of 6 battleships (five of which were Pearl Harbor survivors), 4 heavy cruisers, 4 light cruisers, 28 destroyers and 39 PT boats, creating a gauntlet of fire that would, for six hours on this night, destroy the Japanese Southern Force in detail, sinking both of its battleships, two heavy cruisers and at least three destroyers outright, with several more surviving Japanese ships sunk by aircraft later in the morning as they tried to escape back south through the strait.
2) Battle off Samar. Admiral Kurita’s still-potent Central Force slipped through San Bernardino Strait unopposed overnight, making its way down the eastern coastline of Samar Island with what appeared to be a clear run to General MacArthur’s invasion fleet. Kurita’s four battleships, including the massive Yamato, six heavy cruisers, two light cruisers and eleven destroyers carried enough firepower to systematically obliterate the American landing force, which would be ranged by their guns in mere hours. Nothing now stood between Kurita and his targets except a handful of startled escort carriers (CVE) carrying only ~30 planes each, and another handful of destroyers, armed with 5″ guns and torpedoes. Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague ordered all of his planes- about 90 total- to launch as the CVEs scuttled toward rain squalls to the east. The old Wildcats and Avengers attacked with such fury that Kurita believed he had roused the large carriers of Third Fleet rather than nearly hopeless escorts of the Seventh Fleet. When the planes ran out of ammunition, they kept making dry runs to try to force the Japanese out of ammo. The destroyer squadrons also ran at flank speed into the Japanese formation, firing their little 5 inchers into the huge armored targets before them. The CVEs themselves came under direct Japanese gunfire, with USS Gambier Bay (CVE73) the particular object of IJN Yamato’s 18″ artillery, which crippled and sank the thin-skinned carrier, the only carrier in the war to be sunk by naval gunfire. Then suddenly, when the American position looked doomed, Admiral Kurita fired one last salvo at the American ships and turned around to the north to retire from the fight, a stroke of luck in the famous “fog of war” that no-one anticipated. May I recommend a book, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors (2004) by James D. Hornfischer will give you a mesmerizing insight into the reality of this nearly point blank David-and-Goliath slugfest.
3) Battle of Cape Engano. The Japanese Northern Force of four aircraft carriers and old battleships, the decoy fleet designed to draw off Halsey’s Third Fleet from the main event, actually did decoy Halsey and his five fleet carriers, five light carriers, six battleships, eight cruisers and forty destroyers to chase them several hundred miles away from the main fight at Leyte. But they paid for it, as they expected. Admiral Ozawa’s 108 aircraft were no match for Halsey’s 7-800, and after his planes were swept from the skies, the virtually undefended ships came under withering attack from the Americans, who sank three carriers and a destroyer, and heavily damaged the two light carriers. Despite these important victories, the main story of this battle was the fact that it happened at all, epitomized by the message to Halsey from Fleet Admiral Nimitz at the height of the crisis off Samar: “Where is Third Fleet? The World Wonders.”
October 26th
1776: Philadelphia inventor Benjamin Franklin departs as the United States’ first Ambassador to France. His mission is to secure France’s support for the fresh American Republic.
1881: Doc Holliday and the Earp Brothers kill 3 of the the group led by Ike Clanton at the famous Shootout at the OK Corral in Tombstone, Arizona.
Ah, yes, Agincourt, what a study of human psychology and drama that is, featuring as one of its stars Henry V, who was said to be a pious, unsmiling man who was rather less fun than Shakespeare depicted him, with his only recorded joke being, “War without fire is like sausages without mustard”, which reflected the humor of a monarch who left thousands of corpses in his rampage across France.
According to history, the year of 1414 AD was a turbulent time for medieval Europe for in that year King Henry the V claimed the French throne through his father: Edward the III.
By way of background, the Hundred Years’ War, as the conflict is known to us and which Agincourt was a part of, had begun with Henry V’s great-grandfather Edward III, who claimed the throne of France through his mother Isabella, daughter of Philip IV.
His dynastic case was fairly strong, depending on whether one believes Salic Law had been fully accepted at that point, but the war had eventually ground to a halt and under Edward’s successor Richard II the government was too divided to do much more than a few raids.
By the time Henry V ascended the throne in 1413, an opportunity arose in the bitter divide that had arisen between the two French court factions, the Burgundians and Armagnacs.
This divide had accelerated in 1407 when Louis, Duke of Orléans, was stabbed to death by men in the pay of the Burgundian John the Fearless.
Furthermore the King of France, Charles VI, had gone insane, suddenly stabbing to death four men one day in August 1392, with the bouts of madness becoming more frequent.
Of course, the French nobles laughed at Henry V and mocked at him, which greatly upset the English, so that the English council of nobles gave approval for Henry V to issue double taxes to raise an army with which to invade the French continent and to conquer the French crown.
On the 19th of April 1415 Henry V finally got the permission from the council of nobles to invade French and Henry’s army landed on the 13th of August and he right away besieged the port of Harfleur, with his army of 12,000 men.
Although the siege only lasted for 1 month it lasted way longer than Henry expected, costing him 3,000 soldiers who died of diseases and dysentery because of the filthy conditions the besiegers had to live in while the siege was going on.
Because Henry couldn’t retreat after this siege he had to do something bold to insult the French and to show their weaknesses.
Ever since Crecy the French had been evading open field battles against the English, holing up instead in their Citadels to starve the English armies who were rampaging through the countryside.
To show the world that the English weren’t defeated, Henry V decided to march right through French soil into the English held town Calais, so Henry left 3,000 soldiers behind to guard Harfleur and he then marched with the remaining 6,000 men on a forced march to Calais.
However, before Henry reached Calais he found out that a very important river crossing had been blocked by a French garrison delaying the journey, and the next few crossing were also blocked delaying and weakening Henry’s army even further.
Immediately after Henry found a passible crossing their army stumbled upon the tracks that an army of 30,000 men would make.
The shocked English army followed the tracks until they found the French army battle ready on the other side of a pasture field.
On 25 October 1415, Saint Crispin’s day, the day of the Battle, 6,000 weakened and diseased English soldiers were about to face 30,000 battle ready French nobles on the other side of a muddy pasture after a night’s rain.
The English army consisted of 5,000 longbowmen and 1,000 men-at-arms, while the French army consisted of 25,000 men-at-arms of which about 1,200 were on horseback, the remaining 5,000 men were crossbowmen.
The English command structure was very simple with Henry V as the supreme commander of the army, who divided his main battle line in three parts center, left and right with the center by himself, the left led by Camoys and the right led by the Duke of York, with the utmost flanks being guarded by longbowmen.
The French command structure actually was non-existent because nobody knew who led the French army, as every high ranking noble had brought a small army but no one knew who ordered this gathering of forces.
This meant that whilst Henry was motivating his men the French were awaiting orders that no one gave.
When Henry had finished his speech the English were waiting until the French attacked, the French were still waiting for orders, so when it became clear for Henry V that the French weren’t about to attack he ordered his men to move within ultimate bowshot range.
The hungry English marched through the muddy field and started firing, with 5,000 archers said to be firing 60,000 arrows per minute.
The first load of arrows hit the heavy cavalry causing a chain reaction: hit horses panicked and galloped forward which was the sign for the rest of the cavalry to start their charge, but because of the mud, the horses couldn’t get to speed making the carnage among them even worse.
Because of their armor, the knights on their horses didn’t have a clear view of the battle and opening their visors would have been suicide.
The routed French cavalry charged back through the French Battle line that was now advancing, adding even more to the panic.
The rain of arrows just kept raining, killing still more Frenchmen, and on the moment the exhausted French men-at-arms charged at the English battle line they did so in three crude wedges, instead of maintaining their formation, because the arrogant French dukes went for the ransom money of the richer English nobles, ignoring the longbowmen who kept shooting their arrows,
The rested English men-at-arms had no trouble killing the French men-at-arms who reached the English line completely exhausted.
Soon after the first few rows of French men-at-arms were slain the French battle line started a mass rout, so that the second French battle line that was already underway to the English lines ended up pushing the routed first French battle line back onto the sharpened English swords, and the wall of French bodies.
The second French battle line had more common sense than the first and attacked the whole English line including the longbowmen who’d used up all their arrows.
However, the nimble longbowmen who weren’t encumbered by a heavy armor killed the French men-at-arms by stabbing them in the joints of their armor.
The tired French men-at-arms were at a breaking point because most of their nobles were killed and the English seemed immortal, and just before the French breaking point, in what would be called a war crime today, Henry V ordered his men to kill the French prisoners because reports were coming in saying that some French cavalry had just assaulted the supplies, which shocked Henry, because a lot of his men were guarding the prisoners and a cavalry strike in the back of his battle line would be disastrous.
So the English “reinforcements” that were freed by killing the prisoners was enough to start a mass rout.
The third and final French battle didn’t even bother to fight the battle and fled of the field.
Ending the battle of Agincourt has been heralded as a heroic victory for the English.
There is a strong moral aspect to the story, depending on one’s point of view where it is said the flower of French chivalry were destroyed in a few hours by a rabble of English peasants!
As would be the case with the machine gun in WWI, the English longbow changed the nature of warfare in medieval warfare, and the world hasn’t been the same, ever since.