The Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) was a series of wars between England and France involving England’s claim to the French throne. In the campaign of 1415, England’s Henry V sailed for France and besieged the fortress at Harfleur, capturing it in September. The English army then marched across the French countryside towards Calais, only to be intercepted by the French army near the village of Azincourt. Henry’s troops were exhausted, hungry, sick, demoralised, and pitiably outnumbered (according to some estimates, by some 36000 to 9000 troops).
It didn’t look good. Henry needed to rouse his men for battle like never before, and he gave them a speech which not only roused them, but spurred them to a victory that would resound throughout the ages as the famous Battle of Agincourt. It was the morning of October 25th (St Crispin’s Day).
That Henry’s speech occurred is agreed by historians to be a factual event. However, it was left to the creative imagination of William Shakespeare, two hundred years later, to envisage Henry’s words and compose the über-galvanising “St Crispin’s Day Speech” that has come down to us in his play, Henry V.
What a speech! If anything could get you up and off to face the French, it’s surely inspirational words such as these:
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today who sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother…
…gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here
And hold their manhoods cheap…
Laurence Olivier famously delivered this call to arms in the 1944 film of the play, made as a morale-booster for the war effort. However, for me there is no better delivery than this mesmerising performance by Kenneth Branagh in the 1989 version. Watch this, and allow yourself to be fired up, but please resist the temptation to hit a Frenchman!
PS almost certainly apocryphal, but a great story nonetheless, is the claim that, in the real life speech, Henry V told his men that the French had boasted that they would cut off two fingers from the right hand of every archer, so that he could never draw a longbow again. After the battle, English archers were showing French captives those fingers as if saying “See – my fingers are still here”. This is now known as the “V” for victory gesture!
