Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 52 - The Battle of Agincourt

Episode Date: May 27, 2019

On this episode more inbred people beef over turf, English longbowmen drowned French knights in shallow puddles, and Joe mispronounces everything to do with England. Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys Buy Joe's book: https://www.amazon.com/Citizen-Earth-Galaxy-Fire-Book-ebook/dp/B07NSMFSHN/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=citizen+of+earth&qid=1558956418&s=gateway&sr=8-1 Buy a teeshirt: https://teespring.com/stores/lions-led-by-donkeys-store follow us on twitter: @lions_by sources: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8648068/Battle-of-Agincourt-ten-reasons-why-the-French-lost.html https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03044181.2016.1236504

Hi everyone, Nate here. Just a little announcement in advance. Yes, I realize it's pronounced Agincourt. No, I'm not going to go through and correct every single mention of it in this episode. So enjoy. Lions Led by Donkeys on the topic of the Battle of Agincourt. Or if you're from Detroit, Agincourt. Henry DeVee goes, this is my chance.

I'm going to arouse my troops. I'm going to do a speech. And he says We are together in the fight Me and you boys And we're gonna mark the French You will be remembered you will be together Band of brothers

England, England, England! Let's fuck it up with wedgies! The walking's off! And they charge at each other. England v France. Dover versus Calais. Greggs vs. Passants. English Bastards vs. French Bastards. Hello, and welcome to yet another episode of the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe.

Nick. Rich is not with us today because our last week episode was a fucking train wreck. Was it? I liked it. Yeah, I liked it too. And I feel like that could work for our not regular history episodes. You know? Yeah. But not normal ones.

I guess today's normal. As normal as any of our shows have ever been. Are they considered normal? For us. Okay. Normal's relative. Yeah. I don't know.

We're talking about the battle of agoncourt uh today which is i don't think we've talked about knights or anything i don't think we've talked about anything that far back we talked about the crusades kind of yeah a fake crusade uh but before we get to that how have you been great yeah we had uh the book launch of my first sci-fi novel uh citizen of earth it was amazing i loved it two nights ago now 17 oh yes so this will be this is next week but anyway yeah uh it was really cool um thank you for everybody who came out uh shout out to the old q anon guy yes the guy was fucking hilarious uh that made my whole event for me. The whole QAnon conspiracy theory is super dangerous.

There's been people who have been murdered over it. I definitely wouldn't have taken it in such good stride as I did if it wasn't a clearly unwell old man. The guy was at least pushing 60-something. He was definitely there alone. He was. I didn't tell him to like go fuck himself uh if it was someone more our age and it was much more pushy very i probably would have told him to

go fuck himself i'm just glad that so he sat down uh the first encounter was great he just kind of showed up with a chair and then just sat down between two other guests i sent him your way oh thank you thank you. Thank you, you fucking asshole. It was great because as soon as he brought up Satan and Mars, I was like, I know a guy that you would love to talk to. Oh, thanks, man. I thought he'd also buy a book, too. He didn't.

So I was trying to help you out, too. I mean, on the down low, if you're going to come up to my stall and say whatever the fuck you want, if you pay me 15 and buy a book i don't give a shit i'll listen to whatever he didn't buy my book he did take up a lot of real estate so there's two people at my table who are uh talking about the book ask questions like because we like free cupcakes and and shit like that we're handing out to you because we're weird and he brought a chair with him and then just plopped it down in between those two people and just immediately forced himself into the middle of the conversation it was about like

a coup against the president and children were going to mars which is kind of like the plot to doom yeah and uh he said something else and that's when i immediately just got up and pretended i had to go the bathroom and i went into the bathroom for probably 15 minutes i just sat on the toilet and checked twitter for a few minutes and i came back and came back he had cornered someone against the wall and was telling him all about shit. And he finally left. But he was like slurring his words. He's probably pretty drunk. Also nuts.

And like he was wearing the most. It looked like he's wearing glasses that he cleaned with like steel wool. They're just scratched as shit and they're all cockeyed. Like he looks like someone who might make a fertilizer bomb for funsies. He looks like he lives in the area. Yeah. And we got really drunk and hand out books is really fun. So yeah,

but we are talking about the battle of Agincourt today, which brings us all the way back to the hundred years war. One of seemingly countless wars between England and France. This one beginning in 1337. Okay. So if anybody's new or isn't familiar with what we do here, I'm not going to talk about the entire Hundred Years' War because, of course, I'm not.

Sounds really long. Yeah. Hundred years even. Oh, yeah. So in true donkey fashion, I'm going to yada, yada, yada my way through. 99% of it. Just get through this one battle. Yes.

Like most wars of the day, this is about succession. The King of England had claimed to the throne of France, and the French nobility had some obvious problems with being ruled by some limey fucks from across the ocean. These guys are kind of assholes. Well, I mean, if you go far enough back in time all the way up until like world war one even parts of world war two uh it all goes to it goes back to like a whole bunch of inbred royals beefing over turf like they're all

fucking related and uh it's like makes for some really weird family trees yeah reunions are weird yeah uh as a as the war raged on the british had a tendency to win most of the battles at one point they actually signed a peace treaty in 1396 but france just ignored it uh france's king charles of the time was so insane that he lost control of the throne and uh caught in fighting between the dukes of Orlone and Burgundy uh which eventually brought England right back into everything he was so uh so he was King Charles the sixth I believe he was so fucking crazy like he thought he was made of glass and he would break really familiar uh I may have probably learned about him yeah at one point in my life he was so nuts he would randomly he was known to fly off the handle

and randomly assault people and bark at them like dogs he's fucking insane I hope he had a trainer just for fun he would just randomly lash out and hit people with sticks to include his own military commanders and wife sir I brought you your

I mean, and the weird part is like, I'm not laughing at domestic abuse. Sorry, I thought you were an alien. Yeah, like he would just randomly start screaming at people and attacking them while also being like a recluse and locking himself in his room for fucking weeks at a time. I smell

cinnamon rolls. He's fucking nuts. Just throwing bases. That's awesome. He also thought he was made of glass so he would walk around in like these big poofy clothes in case uh like he fell over airbags yeah ye old airbags uh he was so nuts he couldn't be in control of his own military so it kind of fucked up france for a really long time uh so at one point um everything was going so crazy that both sides took a nice long break in the middle of war to die of plague. Because plague swept through the region.

Yeah, rats had all five of the stones. It was the fleas on the rats. It wasn't the rats themselves. The rats had the stones, though. That's the point. The rats did the finger snap. Exactly. And bam, half of Europe.

That's the point. The rats did the finger snap. Exactly. And bam, half of Europe, uh, which brings us all the way to the year 1415 in the battle of Agincourt, which is why we're here.

Um, uh, King Henry of England formed an alliance with the Duke of Burgundy, uh, getting the Duke to remain neutral as England stomped through France and just fucks everyone else up. Henry in turn, give, uh,

the Duke land and would become the King else up. Henry, in turn, would give the Duke land and would become the king's vassal. With half of the French conflict out of his way, King Henry kind of prepared for an invasion of Normandy. Like any competent commander, he got to get as many people as he could. And in this case, it was around 12,000 people. It was a decent- size army for the day

yeah i mean logistics being a pain in the ass for any army in the 13 and 1400s armies generally were not very big um especially ones you're deploying away from home i always wondered how that worked back then uh it's kind of like a um you'd call up and then you know it's kind of feudal stuff to an extent uh it's not like like you think in like the dark ages type feudalism but you know um the king of france would ask his royalties to give him men and those dukes and and all the and which we'll go into a little bit the nobility would show up with their knights and england kind of worked the same way um there's also a lot of mercenaries um people to fill the gaps uh but england had a little bit more streamlined military system uh then france france is going to be playing catch up in the next

hundreds of years of conflict that they had ahead of them but um yeah, I mean, you just had a call-up for the nobility in the region, and they'd show up with men. And also, in England in particular, they had a system of levies in place, like yield conscripts, but they had bows and spears. Yes. Okay. Even still, getting together 12,000 people,

putting them on boats and floating them across the English Channel. That seems like a pain in the ass. Yeah, absolutely. So 12,000 is putting him on boats and floating him across the English Channel. That seems like a pain in the ass. Yeah, absolutely. So 12,000 is a decent number. He quickly landed and besieged the city of Harfleur and he expected a quick victory.

Instead, what he got was a six-month long clusterfuck that left about one half of his army dead from wounds and disease. Because it turns out in the 1400s when you send a bunch of men to go camping in the woods,

it ends with a lot of them just shitting themselves to death. Yeah, fuck that, dude. Yeah, disease, I mean, throughout history, disease kills more people than actual combat in all wars, but it was especially prevalent back then.

They'd just camp out and would try to besiege a city and said all these illnesses mostly dysentery would just sweep through the camps and just fuck everybody up you want to drink this mud water with me yeah it's not sure it's not like they had fucking germ theory yeah they didn't know what made you sick except you maybe you upset god yeah oh god's really pissed off at me i've been on the shitter for about three hours. Yeah. And I've had dysentery, which I've probably brought up a dozen times on the show.

It sucks. And that was with medicine. Like dysentery was not going to kill me in Afghanistan. I had medics and stuff to tend to me. But these guys are just like, yep, I'm still pooping blood. And I'm in line for food. Yeah. About 10 feet away from one another. Yeah.

in line for food. Yeah, about 10 feet away from one another. Yeah. King Henry wasn't dumb and he knew he could not continue his campaign with half his men already out of the equation, you know. So he decided to withdraw to the English-held city of Calais. The problem being, of course,

that in the six months that Henry is trapped in a siege, it gave France a hell of a long time to get their shit together. Mustered their armies, put commanders in place, marched toward the threat. Is that enough time?

Oh, yeah. I mean, they're on home turf. Okay. It's not like they have to, say, go across the English Channel. Right. They're next door. I don't know.

Which brings us to the constable of France, Charles d'Albray. He massed together on 36,000 men under his banner, which big fucking army. Holy fuck. Yeah. Like I said, it helps. There's virtually no logistics involved because they're in France. They marched out and blocked Henry's path to safety to Calais, where he was going.

Knowing he would have no choice but to buckle down and fight a far greater force, Henry brought his small army into a natural choke point. Henry was smart enough to know that Charles had enough people under his command to just swamp through his forces and overrun them immediately, or surround them. So he positioned his army in between

two thickets of a very thick forest. Which, you can't set up formations. Knights can't maneuver very well through it. A lot of it's cavalry. So, I mean, a forest might as well have been a wall. They're not going to march through it. The land that Henry decided to form up

was on a freshly plowed field. Nothing special about that quite yet, but it'll end up becoming the most effective weapon of the entire battle. From my understanding, I know that this could be off. I was told that the numbers were probably

still debatable. Yeah. Like most things this old, numbers are really hit and miss. The general agreed upon consensus numbers that the french brought around 30 000 people that's a shit ton yeah and the the british had seven to six to seven thousand okay um because they and most of them were badly sick like diseased and just shitting their armor so i mean it's it's debatable but what isn't

debatable is what happened um right because you know firsthand accounts vary really really greatly it's like when you whenever you read firsthand accounts of like the roman empire and they're like oh god they're talking about wolf gods and stuff this isn't real uh you just have to take you have to compile a whole bunch of different resources together. Hopefully someone smaller than you has already figured out like the middle ground. Right. Which is how I live my life. I have not produced a single bit of independent research on my own. It's always been compiled shit of other people, which is pretty much how history works.

Right. But yeah, everything's debatable just like uh another person in this war uh joan of arc uh not this battle but in the hundred years war pretty much everything she ever did is debatable uh but it's all pretty much there's a certain amount of it that's generally considered true right i just wanted to figure out what the i guess as you said everybody agreed on a number basically generally agreeable consensus is around 30,000 French, less than 10,000 British. Now, once he settled down and began to prepare his positions, Henry had his army drive stakes into the ground, which is a proven measure to ward off cavalry attacks, which brings us to Henry's army on that fateful day. When most people think about medieval armies,

they probably think of legions of knights on a horseback or something around that, right? I mean, that's what I would figure. I'm not, I don't, you know, my speciality is not medieval warfare. Right. Other than the video game, which is awesome. I loved it.

Yeah. Well, Henry was sorely lacking in both of those things he did have around 1500 men at arms which is what they were called uh how many of them were actually knights is not known because while all knights were technically men at arms not all men at arms were knights knights were nobility okay so not all of them were nobles which means some of their equipment wasn't as good because you had to pay for your own shit back then. Right.

These were heavily armored and armed men, but a lot of Henry's horses, the things that these men-at-arms would be mounted on normally, had died from disease at the siege or had starved to death, been eaten, things like that. Oh, horse steak. I've eaten horse before. It's pretty common in most places in Western Europe.

I remember there was a huge problem, mostly France, but there was a huge uproar in England quite a few years ago. They found out a lot of their meat had horse in it. Is horse good? It's not bad. I mean, there's no discernible difference in my opinion okay and i've eaten a lot of weird shit i believe it um some of the shit i've heard is i wouldn't go out of my way to order a horse steak but like i'll eat anything once like i've eaten goat brains wouldn't do it again but i've checked the block and I've moved on. You've lived your life. That's awesome.

The men-at-arms and the knights, which I'll call men-at-arms for the most part because the vast majority of them were not nobility. They were the smallest part of Henry's army. The other 5,000 or so were archers. But they were the famed

English longbowmen, to be more accurate. Those guys got range in the game, too. Yeah, they did. They got really good range. I wouldn't bring 5,000 of them, though. No, I would not. That would not work in medieval total war ever. Well, archers were thought of as the lowest of the low when it came to honor

on the medieval battlefield. The English longbowmen would end up becoming something of a ye olde weapon of mass destruction. lowest of the low when it came to honor on the medieval battlefield the english longbowmen would end up becoming something of like a yield weapon of mass destruction now as a lot of things throughout history um their uh their impact has been wildly misstated in a lot of cases this is not one of them um the battle of agoncourt would be like the rising sun of their existence they the french would eventually learn how to counter them but they hadn't quite figured it out and they hadn't fought so many of them at once before and everything that henry did was to put the longbowman in a beneficiary position because he's not fucking stupid played into himself and he realized this is all he's got um smart so a little about the longbow for people who are not uh archery a fishing house i know i'm

certainly not one i've never fired a bow in my life um but the longbowman stood a full fucking six feet tall which is three inches shorter than me uh an inch shorter than me yeah it's fucking tall and had a draw weight or uh for people are not aware the a draw weight is the amount of weight you had to apply to pull the string back with one hand was 110 pounds uh some claiming that they had uh draw weights of 185 pounds so that's a fuck think he's got lats. Think of how big this dude's arm is. Just the one arm. Yeah, just one arm.

And I'm not even fucking lying about that. They actually have archaeological evidence that it's to warp their bodies. Trying to fire these things as quickly and as accurately as possible is a lifetime worth of training. Archers would begin when they were kids and they would graduate

to larger and more powerful bows as they aged and got stronger. The English archers trained so hard for so long their bodies warped and changed from all the tension. Experts can actually pick out an archer's skeleton from anyone else's

because of the deformities that their training would cause. The left arm would grow huge and the wrist arms and shoulders would develop painful bone spurs over time. The fingers on the right hand would eventually be limited to only the movement required to fire an arrow. And the VA said that is not service connected. Yeah. Yeah.

These guys are just cripples that effectively operated a cannon correctly that's all they could do it's like war it's like warhammer 40k shit with like all like oh yeah we've put this guy's soul in this machine over here he's in constant pain but he's serving the king but he's a total badass with that arrow what's that you said, Bill? Kill me! Long live the emperor, sir. Oh, yeah, cool. Bill's having a good time. The bow was so powerful that at certain ranges it could punch straight through plate

armor, like the same plate armor knights would be wearing. That was somewhat rare and would require the knight to be dangerously close. At that point point i'd use it as a bat i mean six feet yeah uh well i mean it's not like the knight's gonna throw his goddamn

sword at you and he's not moving very fast no he's not i'll trip him uh but anything below a fully armored knight was sure to be eaten alive by a cloud of arrows that a unit of longbowmen could put out. Another thing is, these suits of armor that the normal everyday knights wore were not these super hulking tank ones that people are familiar with. There's a lot of gaps in the armor. Islets, joints, so they can

move their arms and legs. Those are the places the arrows would find. Because when you fire 5,000 fucking arrows into the air, they're going to find everything. Now, Charles's French army could not be more different. Outnumbering Henry by tens of thousands were an army of men at arms and knights,

including thousands of heavily armored cavalry. The French thought so little of the English archers that they discounted them entirely, saying that there was 10 French nobles against one because the only noble in Henry's army was Henry. Ooh.

The problem with having an army full of nobles and knights, though, is that they could not be controlled. All of the nobles demanded that Charles allow them to be part of the vanguard, or also known as the first

unit to cross the field of battle. Because, here's the kicker here, the constable of France was not a noble. Meaning he technically outranked every noble who showed up, but he was not nobility, so they just fucking ignored him.

What's the point? Now, he was supposed to be so they just fucking ignored him what's the point now he was supposed to be in command of the army and the nobles were supposed to listen to him as the constable of france but as they got a title there's a yeah I can blow it off he was I'm I did not look this up but he's probably one of the

highest ranking commoners or lower level nobility in the entire country because he was supposed to command france's armies in the lieu of the king who was remember bug fucking sane right in his room fucking his room up yeah just no reason hitting things to the fucking stick yeah um and he told them no he he tried to tell them no because all these nobles, which are technically his chain of command, all wanted to be part of the first wave because they thought they were going to steamroll over this tiny British army. Whoever wants to be a part of the first wave? It's 36,000 on five.

Still. They all ignored him this had a lot to do with normal honor of battle type shit but also because there's a lot of money to be made in ransoming off captured soldiers back to their family and they didn't want to miss out any of that sweet cash which is how the pow prisoner exchange system generally worked back then commoners would be kind of slaughtered because you were worthless right and uh the minute arms and the nobles um they were thought of well you have to have a little cash laying around so we're gonna sell you back to your family i would not hold my breath if they did that with my family no my i would have definitely

been stabbed immediately i would look at him go don't even try man i don't know what the detroit of england is like where are you from? Like Liverpool, like fucking stab them, put them in the pile, put them, put them in the death pile. Uh, and the, uh,

but the French weren't stupid. Even if they were bloodthirsty, they knew they had the English cornered blocking their only route to a friendly city. So they sat back and waited. Um, it was kind of like an open air siege. They knew they weren't going anywhere. Uh, and they also knew they were short of supplies. In the meantime, it began sat back and waited. It was kind of like an open-air siege. They knew they weren't going anywhere. And they also knew they were short of supplies.

In the meantime, it began pissing down rain, turning their chosen battlefield of freshly plowed field into a slurry of mud. Thick-ass mud, too, it turns out. Henry knew his army was way better off on the defensive, but he could not wait for long.

His army had been marching hard for weeks weeks and he was about out of food and water. Not to mention they were all still passing on whatever horrible diseases they'd picked up from the siege. Um, so when you have dysentery, you have to drink three times more water. You can't really stomach a lot of food,

but you've got to put in a lot more water than normal to, to try to not die of like dehydration. Right? So they were burning through their supplies right into their own pants at a frightening level um so henry had to roll those dice he ordered his army to advance uh he he broke camp and he got closer to the french army he wanted to trick the french into thinking he was going to attack them the next day, no matter how insane that actually sounds. Anyone with a fucking brain

would be like, they're not going to attack us, even though they moved a bit closer. So they broke camp, moved a little bit closer to him, set up camp again. Oh. I imagine how the soldiers felt. Fuck, we're jumping? God damn it.

Camping out in the night before battle henry was terrified his plan would go to shit and charles would simply order a surprise attack in the middle of the night so he ordered his entire army to stay awake in total silence under pain of having a fucking ear cut off like what if you say a word i'll chop your goddamn ear off that's a weird punishment oh it gets worse across the battlefield the french French soldiers, so convinced in their easy victory against these diseased freaks in the middle of the field. All I hear is splatter and moaning. Oh, God. Oh, kill me.

What was that? I can't hear you. Attack us. Someone just come stab me in the face uh the french were having a party they were they were getting drunk so loudly and screaming out insults that their enemies could hear them we shit normal imagine how disheartening it is you're standing out in the rain not allowed to sleep shitting in your own armor as some guy in a very comfortable tent with all the food water and

liquor he's ever wanted like fuck you buddy like i hope they could really see him and they come out with water and they go oh oh and like yeah oh i spilled water oh sorry i can't hear over the sound of all this food and normal pooping. Good times. Another thing that happened in the French camp while they were waiting out their English enemy. Every French noble with a group of soldiers under his command within a day's ride of the battle joined.

They're like, hey, I hear there's a fight going on over in that Agincourt area. Let's go join it. It's like high school. Yeah, pretty much. It was kind of, yeah. It was a fight in the quad. Yeah, everybody go and like your friend who you didn't actually think was gonna win now is totally beating the shit out of them so you're like let's join in too yeah like they thought they were just joining in on a goddamn

mugging like they didn't think they're joining a battle this is awesome uh so they all swamp charles's area uh as nobles joined uh his army arguments began to crap about who i rank to as well as nobody's entirely sure how to deploy so many men in the first place because remember most armies don't have 30 something thousand men in them right and the army's command is completely spiraling out of the constable of france's control i imagine formations probably look sick as fuck. Or just really unorganized. This is the part of the show I can tell you, sure, now wait five

minutes. Alright, I usually like that. The battle began because the French, wanting to press their cavalry advantage, charged. This was despite not being fully formed together or deployed correctly. Instead of a single formation as cavalry of what you would

expect when you think of a knight or a fully armed cavalry charge, or even a fucking charge of dragoons in like the 1700s, 1800s. Yes. Like, joined together. They just kind of randomly deployed themselves as they saw fit. So it's like a trickle of horsemen. Like, they just saw the next, oh,

alright. I guess we're doing this. It is like, so, I don't know if you've ever heard this um it's called uh uh contagious shooting yes so when you see like one thing everybody just opens it's like contagious marching like well he's going i'm gonna go yeah um it's really big it happens all the time it's virtually every firefight i was ever in what are you shooting at? I don't know. I'm shooting over there at everybody else. That was when the archers unleashed a storm of arrows. Now, the knights are pretty well protected from the arrows at such a distance,

but their horses only had armor over their heads, leaving the rest of their body open to be torn apart by incoming arrows. Rest in peace, horses. Big ups to the horse. What were they thinking? They weren't. Horses look badass. I mean, cavalry

is good, and cavalry charges are great at disrupting archers, but not on their own. Also, a formation of cavalry would have been much more effective because these archers would have... In medieval, they're great. I mean, if the

5,000 archers were unleashing arrows on 30 000 people and i'm going to say about half of them were mounted that's still more than enough to overrun them but that's not how it happened it wasn't a formation of 15 000 knights it was a little piss trickle of knights coming a little clumps at a time they were really easily taken out um but you know pour one out for the horses. They didn't deserve this. No. The horses probably weren't mean. This sent the knights, whose suits of armor weighed over

100 pounds, splashing into the mud, where they were quickly tied down. Wounded, the pending horses turned and ran back through the advancing infantry, crushing them. What the fuck is this? The horses, I am out. Many of the

knights, suddenly confused, opened their eyeslets to kind of see where they were going. And they were probably shot right in the face by fucking arrows. As soon as they lifted it too, like, Whack! Other knights were taken down by arrows as they punctured their weaker joints with their armor. Eventually, the knights retreated,

leaving behind thousands of infantry. The minute arms slogged through the mud, getting panicked and picked apart by arrows now the mud was according to first-hand accounts which are not obviously very very old uh the mud was so thick that the small formation of soldiers uh got like pinned down as they got pulled apart so not everybody could muscle their way through the mud at the same rate as you'd want a marching formation to go in so the formation of of the men's arms kind of broke apart. Right.

Kind of like the horses did, where you have three here, four there, one here. So within the cramped confines of this field, it quickly broke down. Instead of one unit of 1,000 armored knights advancing, it was piecemeal. Small groups of men moved faster than others, and the group fatigued from the uphill march towards the archers. By the time the French soldiers finally got to the English lines, they were tired, hungover from a night of drinking, and probably with

one or two arrows sticking out of them, and had absolutely no shape to fight. The French knights were singled out and beaten to death and hacked with axes or shot at close range. The archers were traveling so light that the mud didn't slow them down. So like as the, as the French got close,

the English men at arms would engage them one by one. And the archers are just simply pick up their arrows, move 20 feet back because they're not weighed down at all. They're wearing, they're wearing the littlest amount of armor possible. That's awesome. And so the, the French,

sorry, the English men at arms fresher than shit, just watching watching these dudes slug up all the way up these hills, just beat them to death when they showed up. I think the worst part of it, what's mixed in the mud is shit. It's all diseased Englishman poop, blood, and horse fear pee. You just fall and you're like, oh, it's in my arrow wounds. Several of the Englishmen at arms would gang up on a single Frenchman and drag him off behind the lines

to ransom him off. Because remember, they wanted to sell the Frenchman too. So it was more like a giant kidnapping fight. This is how war was back then. In many occasions, pissed off English archers, no doubt shitting their pants uncontrollably from horrible dysentery drowned french knights in the mud shit mixture after

pushing them over you think they were laughing about it imagine you like because you know most the knights are like oh i'm i've fallen over i'm probably gonna be ransomed off now and some angry ass dude with a bow and arrow just turns you over and slowly pushes your face into the mud. Like, no, no, not like this! Kill me. When the French finally did get a formation together, they simply had too many men. Because, now, the first couple waves have gone awfully,

but, like, they still had thousands and thousands of men. Soldiers were packed so close together that when they got to the English line, they couldn't even lift their fucking weapons to attack them. As more French soldiers joined in the attack, the ones stuck in the front could not retreat. The ones in the back

were literally pushing soldiers in front of them in an attempt to add their weight to an advance, when in reality they were just pushing more and more of their comrades into a slaughter they couldn't even see. It's like the first row of a concert that gets crushed by... Yeah, it's called a human crush. Like, it's killed hundreds of...

So, their formation... Since I try to link every single one of our episodes to the Simpsons episode, if you remember when Mr. Burns went to the doctor and he had so many diseases, he tried to push him through the door? That's what happened they just canceled out yeah it's canceled out except getting canceled they just get hacked to death by angry angry englishmen on the other side of the line i can't uh can't reach you with my weapon so you have soiled me i mean they're

imagine the front line trying to get their weapon up but they're just like pinned in and they just know they're about to get their face caved in with an axe. Or drowned in shit water. When you try to salute and your formation is too close and you accidentally elbow someone in the head because you're way taller than them. Yeah. Story of my entire military career. I do that all the time. So many men were

pushing against another human crush effect for the soldiers trapped in the middle happened they suffocated an unknown amount of french soldiers in their own armor who are so stuck in the middle of formation they could not even drop dead their body just got carried along so imagine your uh english soldier a man at arms waiting for your turn to stab somebody and like oh there it is is he fucking dead he just drops to the front of the formation just

just falls face first I didn't do that that one counts that one's mine what's all this then I didn't even get a chance to stab him is somewhere in the middle is growing pile of corpses that the commander of the French Charles

the constable of France was killed we don't we don't know how probably in the middle of this growing pile of corpses that the commander of the French Charles, the consul of France, was killed. We don't know how. Probably in the pile. I assume he was just smothered to death with other soldiers. At one point, Henry learned his brother, the's pronounced gloucester uh had been wounded somewhere on the line and he quickly rode over to protect him for his troubles he was smashed in the head with an axe breaking his crown in half but he survived towards the end of the battle henry received word that his supply train to the rear of him was being attacked uh suddenly afraid they

were being outflanked because i mean during all this henry was never under the impression that he was winning he kind of figured he was going to be pinned down strong and destroyed yeah uh so he assumed they were finally making the flanking motion and coming up at his rear uh so henry ordered all of the french prisoners to be killed on the spot because he had now taken so many fucking prisoners they now outnumbered him and he was afraid so he was afraid the prisoners would come to the conclusion like wait we could just punch these guys and take them over

because now the English soldiers were exhausted so it was now it was considered a bit of when they started the English yeah for the most part mostly from all the pooping themselves while this is considered a violation of chivalry the knights and Henry's

to the knights and Henry's army who did not want to take part the archers had no problem at all stabbing them all making fun of me you fuck and like the archers weren't really normally take it so if the archers had been captured if they did if they were given the privilege to like

live they'd get their fingers cut off on their art on their pulling hand on their bows they could not be an archer movie sniper i mean that happens a lot throughout history but i've never seen the movie really yeah okay well like okay it happens a lot uh but uh if you were to be ransomed off back to your family like if you're a rich one um they would make sure you could not be an archer against them ever again. And they'd cut off, I believe it was your middle and forefingers, so you couldn't pull a bow anymore. So they weren't real happy with knights. They took their opportunity to stab them directly in their eye slits.

another thing that happened during the huge human crush is like you know obviously uh wearing a tin fuck or you know a steel suit tin suit aluminum suit of armor wearing a fucking suit of metal it's very very hot so a lot of the french soldiers are just dying of heat stroke jesus in the middle in the middle of battle uh i mean also could you imagine like Henry trying to tell his army to execute all these people is like I gotta find a loophole in this in the chivalry thing hey you archers you want to stab some knights they're like fuck yeah I want to stab some knights

chivalry loophole baby after three hours of endless fucking slaughter you have so many options to die in this field yeah I mean roll the dice man how so many options to die in this field. Yeah, I mean, roll the dice, man. How do you want to die? Do you want to get stabbed in the face with an arrow?

Beat to death? Axed? Ran over by your own horse? Drowned in shit? Drowned in shit water? Fucking sweat to death? Yeah. Sky's the limit!

I think this is the most options I've seen. Yeah. Normally, it's either just get shot or exploded. Yeah. So, after three hours of endless, this went on for three hours of endless slaughter. Henry looked around and saw he'd lost somewhere between 100 and 600 men.

Really? That's it. That's pretty good. On a giant pile of death in front of him, however, included 11,000 dead Frenchmen, many of whom were nobility. More than that... So, France lost its constable,

you know, its commander, admiral, for whatever reason, master crossbowman, and its grand marshal, all in one battle. All very high-ranking people. Have you ever been in medieval times? I have.

Dude, I went to medieval times i think in so i was in middle school because uh you know growing up in michigan chicago was very far away um and we went to a class trip to chicago on a bus and so we went to medieval times only time i've ever been there uh i went for a class trip too i think that's the only reason anyone ever goes to me all the time so i would would totally fucking go again. Is there any around here? No, I don't think so. There's only like a dozen or so in the entire country. There was one, I think like

maybe two hours away from my school and we went. It almost got cancelled because there was a fight on the bus, but we still went. It's a very LA reason for it to get cancelled. I didn't live in LA at the time. All the nights lining up for to joust and someone in the crowd just fucking sprays them with handgun fire. This is not from the time period.

Oh, goddammit, are the LA kids here again? Last time this happened, somebody stabbed a knight and tagged him with blood graffiti. He asked what set he was in. blood graffiti he asked what set he was in um and mine nothing like weird happened except you know they had like weird medieval type names for all the food and drinks everything and i was like peppering him with so many obnoxious questions like that poor dude like some renfair reserve guy just trying to earn money on the weekend some asshole kid i mean i was what 14 i didn't know what the i didn't have any sympathy for service workers no teenager didn't anybody calls me out for it

you're fucking lying because all teenagers suck but i was like oh yeah what's this what's this what's this because there's like a turkey leg he's like it's a dragon's leg or is it griffin's leg or something yeah and he like he's like what do you want to drink i'm like uh mountain dew what's that he's like it's dragon piss kid shut the? I'm like, Mountain Dew. What's that? He's like, it's dragon piss, kid. Shut the fuck up. And he walked away. Oh, that's fucking awesome. And my teacher's sitting right next to me.

He's like, you deserve that, Joe. I was like, yep, I'll shut up now. That's awesome. That's pretty great. That wasn't a lot of drink soda as a kid, so. I wasn't either. That's why I did it at school. Lucky. We had milk in a bag.

What? You're Canadian? I'm dead serious. They gave us milks in square bags. In school? That's weird. Normally you puncture it but I found out all we did was bite the corner and just suck it. Just slap the bag with milk?

You're fucking McPoyle from Always Sunny. Ew. No, don't. We had square pizza, rectangle pizzas. Oh, yeah, we definitely had those. Very greasy. Yeah.

I think our school lunch options were Bosco sticks, which were like cheese-filled breadsticks, and pizza, and that was pretty much it. That sounds terrible. Yeah, my school had a crippling obesity rate. We just had the pizza. God, is that all we had?

Do we eat that every day? Fuck, we might have. Explain so much. Whenever you come over, you're like, what do you want to eat? Pizza or burritos? I'm like, fuck. I don't want to eat that again. I mean, it's easy. It's right there. Mainly eat like oh pizza or burritos i'm like fuck i don't want to eat that again i mean it's easy it's right there mainly i just get the burritos i feel like at this point it's just an urge for you to always have pizza on hand at any given time i don't eat as much pizza

you i think you eat more than i do i feel like if i grew up only eating pizza for lunch every day i would have been very turned off from the concept of pizza i haven't had pizza and so the last time i had pizza was when you ordered it was at the book launch because i ordered pizza for lunch every day, I would have been very turned off from the concept of pizza. I haven't had pizza. The last time I had pizza was when you ordered it. It was at the book launch. Because I ordered pizza for everybody. Yeah. Expensive pizza.

Yeah, it wasn't that good either. It's like I'm turned off from ever eating hamburger helper ever again. Same. Because my mom, she had three kids to make dinner for every night being a single mom.

And hamburger helper is incredibly cheap. So she would just make whatever flavor of hamburger helper she found chuck it all in a pot and put like some american slices on top dinner and i ate that for like 17 years i will not touch that shit i tried my mom and i don't have a fucking time to try. By the time it got to her third kid, her give a fuck was thoroughly broken. At my mom's fifth kid, she was like, you know what?

Fuck, Jesus Christ. She was like, you know what? Did she give birth in litters? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's how Mexicans do it. But I'm pretty sure at one point

when me and my brother were fighting, she was like, you know what? If one of you just died, that'd make life so much easier. Holy shit. I was like, well. I think If one of you just died, that'd make life so much easier. Holy shit. I was like, well.

I think she was just hoping the LAPD would take care of that for her. LA County. We were in LA County at the time. That's worse. Yeah, it's a lot worse. But LAPD, they shared our block, I think, because I saw both of them all the time. Anyway. There's no way to segue that back to the show uh but so after all those people died in the french military chain of command that would

be like if somehow um the u.s military lost its attorney general chief of staff and secretary of defense all in one battle somehow yeah france managed that um i'm still puzzled the in how now the impact of the battle was complex it definitely did not end the war but Henry returned to England his goal the whole time after losing half his army to shit related death but his dynasty was secure I'm sure he was confused as fuck

returning back like Like, how? The French snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Well, the massive losses in the battle caused an even bigger fracture in the French royalty. Eventually, the Duke of Burgundy would march on Paris, but the war would continue for several more decades because it's the Hundred Years' War. But it war would continue for several more decades because it's the 100 years war. But it is

considered one of the most embarrassing French defeats in military history. Even more so than the invasion of France in World War II. Because they were actually supposed to win this one. So I'm sure if we can go on YouTube

we could probably find some dudes trying to recreate it oh definitely definitely i want to know if there's like someone trying to water a field somewhere like no the mud isn't the right consistency this isn't accurate oh you know they do yeah i do know so like that's not quite i want to know if the british reenactors like purposely contaminate all their food with shit particles so they can catch dysentery. Just talking to... Because at public events, we talk to kids and families on the uniforms we wear and what

happened at the time. I imagine they're probably sitting down shitting themselves. So let me tell you a little bit about my symptoms, kids. My butthole burns. And I haven't kept down solid food in weeks. All right. Alright, class. Let's go to the next exhibit here. What are you doing?

I'm drowning a man in shit water. Okay. This was a bad plan. You know, I actually enjoyed our little public events sometimes. I feel like that's the only good way. That's the only thing that reenacting could be used for good.

Because there's probably some amount of Frenchmen who do reenactment for this. And they're just monarchists. And they just missed the day they had a king. Even though that was hundreds of years ago. You know they fucking exist. No, they do. I know it. Trust me.

Oh my God. So many stories. Oh, they're all so good. So that is the Battle of Agincourt. Shit related death and axes to the face. Long story short. So our one year anniversary as a show is coming up uh we're gonna be doing a q a uh ask us anything you want history related or otherwise try to you know keep it down we

link to history it's what we're about uh you can say don't yeah whatever we don't really care um i look forward to more cosplay stories um at this point we could do a whole fucking episode about that shit. I think we should. Honestly, we really should. You can send them to the show's Twitter at lines underscore by or you can email me at jjcasabian at gmail.com. There's

new designs at our Teespring store at our Lines Led by Donkeys store. You can find the link at our Twitter or just Google Teespring Lines Led by Donkeys.keys store. You can find the link on our Twitter or just Google Teespring Lions Led by Donkeys. We've got a whole bunch of new shirt designs. If you feel what we are doing is worth a dollar, go ahead and donate to us on Patreon. All that goes

to server costs, book costs, costs of paying our long-suffering producer now, Nate. God bless his service. Did he enjoy the last episode? He said it wasn't that bad, which shocked me. That's awesome. Also goes to

hiring designers for coming up for shirts, since neither one of us are good at Photoshop. Buy my book, Citizen of Earth. It came out last week. I hear it's okay and also I'd like to pay my mortgage. You can follow me on Twitter at jcast99. Follow Nick.

NickcastM1. And for the one or two times a week that he might tweet something. Yes. For everybody else, we'll see you next week. Later.