Six Centuries From Agincourt

King Harry and his victory have shaped the Anglo-American character as few things ever have.

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NOTE: I wrote this essay ten years ago to commemorate the 600th anniversary of one of the ten or so most important battles in human history, Henry’s triumph at Agincourt. — RDM

by Rod D. Martin
October 25, 2015

Today in 1415 on this, St. Crispin’s Day, King Henry V triumphed at Agincourt. The battle is one of the defining moments in the history of the English-speaking peoples. It is a victory like unto Marathon or Arbela; or for Christians, and certainly for the devout King Henry, a postcanonical deliverance comparable to the victory of Gideon, or to the parting of the Red Sea.

Historians speak of the First British Empire, which began in Jamestown and ended at Yorktown, and of the Second British Empire, of which India became the keystone and which died very quickly once its heart was removed.

But eight decades before Columbus and Cabot sailed to the Americas, the victory at Agincourt established an earlier, English…