Agincourt: Myths Explained

Dan Snow's History Hit

History Hit

History

4.7 • 12.9K Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2022

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Agincourt is a name which conjures an image of plucky English archers taking on and defeating the arrogant and aristocratic knights of the French court. But was it really the David and Goliath struggle often depicted on stage and screen?

In this episode of the podcast, Dan is joined by Mike Loades to challenge some of the popular myths that surround the battle. Just how outnumbered were the English really? Could the French Knights really not get up if knocked over? And, was Henry V's campaign in France really a success despite the victory at Agincourt?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is sponsored by Audible, where you can now stream the new series of that brilliant Stephen Fry's
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0:38.6	Hello, everybody. Welcome to Dan Snow's History. A few months ago, we had an episode on the Battle of Ezenkurt,
0:44.6	proof-of-prove-repopular. We thought we'd revisit that iconic battle, talk about some of the myths associated with it,
0:50.8	which we're doing. So in this podcast, it looms so large, our historical, our cultural imaginations, especially, or particularly, maybe, only if you live in England.
1:01.3	And it's easy to see why it was on one level of very impressive victory, but it has been so mythologised from the moment the fighting finished,
1:09.9	right up until the present day. The mythology built up around it by Henry V. himself and people like Shakespeare at Lawrence Olivier,
1:17.1	and that work continues. So in this episode, we'll give you a brief description of the course of the battle.
1:22.0	You can go back and listen to my version, or explain if you want to get the in-depth me getting a bit carried away, going a bit mad.
1:27.4	But then we'll go for a brief description of the battle itself, but we're going to unpack some of the biggest myths with the very, very brilliant Mike Loads.
1:34.6	He's a national treasure. He's an expert historian. He's been there, done that. He's shot the weapons.
1:38.9	He's been bonked with the lances and the war hammers. He struck with swords. He's the ultimate practitioner of living history.
1:46.1	So he's going to talk me through some of the myths around the battle.
1:50.2	If you wish to go and watch a history of documentaries about
1:53.3	the Hundred Years War or about medieval war phone general or about anything in history, in fact,
1:57.3	go to History Hit TV. The link is in the description of this podcast.
2:02.5	You just go and click on there. You get two weeks for free and you join the world's best history channel.
2:06.4	You get all these podcasts, add free on there. You get hundreds of hours of history documentaries.
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