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1 of 1 DOCUMENT The Times February 25, 1995, Saturday

Rival experts prepare to do battle over Agincourt

BYLINE: John Young SECTION: Home news LENGTH: 590 words

A crossbow abandoned in the thick of the fighting symbolises the supremacy of the English longbow at Agincourt Historian and actor take up positions to debate whereabouts of English archers on battlefield FIVE hundred and eighty years ago a 25,000-strong French army was routed by an English force less than a quarter its size on the field of Agincourt. Although the fact of the victory has never been in dispute, the method of its achievement has and will be the subject of what promises to be a heated debate in London tomorrow. The two sides in the debate, which is being organised by the Battlefields Trust at the Tower of London Education Centre, are Matthew Bennett, senior lecturer in war studies at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, and the actor Robert Hardy, who is a leading authority on archery and, in particular, the use of the longbow. The battle took place on a cramped, muddy field between two woods, factors which helped to nullify the French superiority in numbers. Victory is credited to the English archers who, protected from the advancing French cavalry by a line of stakes, were able to shoot them down and throw the attack into confusion as the retreating cavalry became entangled with the troops advancing from the rear. The argument revolves around the exact position of the archers. In his recent book, The Development of Battle Tactics in the Hundred Years War, Mr Bennett suggests that the English men-at-arms were grouped in three phalanxes in the centre with the archers on the wings. As the French advanced they were caught in a deadly crossfire from the flanks. Mr Hardy argues that the maximum range of the English archers was between 300 and 400 yards, so they would not have been able to reach the centre of the line, which stretched for at least 1,000 yards. He maintains that the archers were either positioned on the flanks of the three individual phalanxes or, more likely, strung out in a ''coronet'' across the entire front. Yesterday the two men seemed to be moving closer to each other's view. Mr Bennett suggested that some groups of archers were placed in triangular formations between and slightly ahead of each phalanx, while Mr Hardy accepted that large numbers of archers were indeed on the wings, extending into the woods on either side. He said: ''I am a great admirer of Mr Bennett's writings, but I think in his book he was wrong about the battle formation. If he has come round to my view, then we may well end up agreeing with each other.'' Mr Bennett is certain of one thing, that Laurence Olivier's film of Henry V got it wrong. ''It shows a mass French cavalry charge against the English line whereas they all dismounted after the first attempt,'' he said. ''I shall be taking along a clip of the film to illustrate the error.''

Page 2 Rival experts prepare to do battle over Agincourt The Times February 25, 1995, Saturday

Agincourt has been described as possibly England's greatest military victory. In historical terms, such an assessment is difficult to quantify, but the statistical fact is that Henry V's 5,000 archers and 750 men-at-arms ''we few, we happy few, we band of brothers'' defeated an army of 22,000 knights and 3,000 crossbowmen under the command of Charles d'Albret, the Constable of France. The English suffered only a few hundred casualties, compared with between 5,000 and 6,000 French fighters killed, and the victory paved the way for the English occupation of large parts of France. Limited tickets are available for the debate at 11am at Europa House, St Katharine's Way, London; telephone 0203 350763. LOAD-DATE: February 28, 1995 LANGUAGE: ENGLISH Copyright 1995 Times Newspapers Limited