Melville House Books

It’s one of the most stirring passages in all of English literature:

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered –
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

The lines from Shakespeare‘s Henry V, however famous for their literary quality, are also famous for teaching an important — some say key — bit of British history, which is the story of how in 1415 British forces under King Henry V defeated far superior (i.e., more numerous) French forces at the Battle of Agincourt. Thanks in large part to the Bard, it has become accepted, over the centuries, that the British faced — as Shakespeare put it — “fearful odds” in being outnumbered five to one, yet through superior skill and technology (the fabled English longbowmen) and superior strategy (luring the French cavalry to charge them across a muddy pasture that almost literally swallowed up the weighty knights in armor), the British were able to win the day.

The victory over impossible odds has become regarded not only as perhaps the greatest military victory ever, but “a keystone of the English self-image,” observes a New York Times article … which goes on to note that, well, historians now believe maybe the British weren’t so outnumbered after all.

According to the Times‘ James Glanz, “a group of historians in Britain and France who have painstakingly combed an array of military and tax records from that time … now take a skeptical view of the figures handed down by medieval chroniclers. The historians have concluded that the English could not have been outnumbered by more than about two to one. And depending on how the math is carried out, Henry may well have faced something closer to an even fight ….”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.