Product Description

An extraordinary and dramatic depiction of the legendary battle of Agincourt from the number one historical novelist Agincourt, fought on October 25th 1415, on St Crispin's Day, is one of the best known battles, in part through the brilliant depiction of it in Shakespeare's Henry V, in part because it was a brilliant and unexpected English victory and in part because it was the first battle won by the use of the longbow - a weapon developed by the English which enabled them to dominate the European battlefields for the rest of the century. Bernard Cornwell's Azincourt is a vivid, breathtaking and meticulously well researched account of this momentous battle and its aftermath. From the varying viewpoints of nobles, peasants, archers, and horsemen, Azincourt skilfully brings to life the hours of relentless fighting, the desperation of an army crippled by disease and the exceptional bravery of the English soldiers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7954 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-01
• Released on: 2009-01-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 464 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780061578915
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Amazon.com Review
Book Description

"The greatest writer of historical adventures today" (Washington Post) tackles his richest, most thrilling subject yet--the heroic tale of Agincourt.

Young Nicholas Hook is dogged by a cursed past--haunted by what he has failed to do and banished for what he has done. A wanted man in England, he is driven to fight as a mercenary archer in France, where he finds two things he can love: his instincts as a fighting man, and a girl in trouble. Together they survive the notorious massacre at Soissons, an event that shocks all Christendom. With no options left, Hook heads home to England, where his capture means certain death. Instead he is discovered by the young King of England--Henry V himself--and by royal command he takes up the longbow again and dons the cross of Saint George. Hook returns to France as part of the superb army Henry leads in his quest to claim the French crown. But after the English campaign suffers devastating early losses, it becomes clear that Hook and his fellow archers are their king's last resort in a desperate fight against an enemy more daunting than they could ever have imagined.

One of the most dramatic victories in British history, the battle of Agincourt--immortalized by Shakespeare in Henry V--pitted undermanned and overwhelmed English forces against a French army determined to keep their crown out of Henry's hands. Here Bernard Cornwell resurrects the legend of the battle and the "band of brothers" who fought it on October 25, 1415. An epic of redemption, Agincourt follows a commoner, a king, and a nation's entire army on an improbable mission to test the will of God and reclaim what is rightfully theirs. From the disasters at the siege of Harfleur to the horrors of the field of Agincourt, this exhilarating story of survival and slaughter is at once a brilliant work of history and a triumph of imagination—Bernard Cornwell at his best.

Historical Notes on Agincourt by Bernard Cornwell

The battle of Agincourt (Azincourt was and remains the French spelling) was one of the most remarkable events of medieval Europe, a battle whose reputation far outranked its importance. In the long history of Anglo-French rivalry only Hastings, Waterloo, Trafalgar, and Crécy share Agincourt’s renown. It is arguable that Poitiers was a more significant battle and an even more complete victory, or that Verneuil was just as astonishing a triumph, and it’s certain that Hastings, Blenheim, Victoria, Trafalgar, and Waterloo were more influential on the course of history, yet Agincourt still holds its extraordinary place in English legend. Something quite remarkable happened on 25 October 1415 (Agincourt was fought long before Christendom’s conversion to the new-style calendar, so the modern anniversary should be on 4 November). It was something so remarkable that its fame persists almost six hundred years later.

Agincourt’s fame could just be an accident, a quirk of history reinforced by Shakespeare’s genius, but the evidence suggests it really was a battle that sent a shock wave through Europe. For years afterward the French called 25 October 1415 la malheureuse journée (the unfortunate day). Even after they had expelled the English from France they remembered la malheureuse journée with sadness. It had been a disaster.

Yet it was so nearly a disaster for Henry V and his small, but well-equipped army. That army had sailed from Southampton Water with high hopes, the chief of which was the swift capture of Harfleur, which would be followed by a foray into the French heartland in hope, presumably, of bringing the French to battle. A victory in that battle would demonstrate, at least in the pious Henry’s mind, God’s support of his claim to the French throne, and might even propel him onto that throne. Such hopes were not vain when his army was intact, but the siege of Harfleur took much longer than expected and Henry’s army was almost ruined by dysentery.

The tale of the siege in the novel is, by and large, accurate, though I did take one great liberty, which was to sink a mineshaft opposite the Leure Gate. There was no such shaft, the ground would not allow it, and all the real mines were dug by the Duke of Clarence’s forces that were assailing the eastern side of Harfleur. The French counter-mines defeated those diggings, but I wanted to give a flavor, however inadequately, of the horrors men faced in fighting beneath the earth. The defense of Harfleur was magnificent, for which much of the praise must go to Raoul de Gaucourt, one of the garrison’s leaders. His defiance, and the long days of the siege, gave the French a chance to raise a much larger army than any they might have fielded against Henry if the siege had ended, say, in early September.

Maps of the Battlefield (Click to Enlarge)

England and France, 1415: One of the most dramatic victories in British history, the battle of Agincourt--immortalized by Shakespeare in Henry V--pitted undermanned and overwhelmed English forces against a French army determined to keep their crown out of Henry's hands.

The French Coast: The British campaign, which started at Harfleur, ended more than two months later on 25 October at Agincourt.	Harfleur: Henry's army landed in northern France on 13 August 1415 and besieged the port of Harfleur.	The Battle Lines: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today who sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.” – William Shakespeare, Henry V

From Publishers Weekly
A literary veteran of the Napoleonic Wars and the U.S. Civil War, Cornwell returns to the Hundred Years War era in this action-packed if slightly melodramatic epic about King Henry V and the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. Nicholas Hook, an English forester, is on the run after interfering with a rapist priest and ends up a mercenary defender at Soissons, where he saves a young and beautiful novitiate, Melisande. With his French prize in tow, he returns to England and signs on with Henry's army as an archer. Back on French soil, he fights and slogs his way to Agincourt, where 6,000 Englishmen confront 30,000 French soldiers. Hearing the voice of St. Crispinian whispering to him in times of personal crisis, Hook has his hands full with the French and defending himself from the vengeance-seeking rapist priest and Melisande's father. The crisply rendered battle scenes are adrenaline rushes of blood, thunder and clashing swords that transport the reader back to the early 15th century. Unfortunately, Hook's Hollywood-ready construction undercuts the you are there feeling of Cornwell's otherwise vivid recreation of Henry V's greatest military triumph. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
Shakespeare immortalized Agincourt in his historical play, King Henry V, through the eyes of England's king. Although King Henry still makes some prominent appearances, Agincourt examines this battle from the perspective of a common soldier. Critics agreed that the nonstop action and gory violence may not appeal to all readers. But those interested in military historical fiction will find Agincourt a compelling read that exposes the hunger, cold, blood, and scheming power plays of battle. A few reviewers faulted the two-dimensional characterization, others the convoluted subplots, and still others a biased English perspective, but readers interested in the topic will find Agincourt an intriguing supplement to Shakespeare's work.
Copyright 2009 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

Customer Reviews

one of cornwell's better novels
This is currently (Nov 29) available from amazon.uk under the title "Azincourt", which is the French spelling of the town where the battle took place. It seems that this has confused quite a few of the Brit readers, and the US title will be "Agincourt". The flavor is similar to the Grail Quest series, but set in 1413-1415 rather than the 14th century, and the hero is Nick Hook rather than Thomas of Hookton: both are skilled archers, both have noble fathers but are not part of the nobility (in Hook's case the parentage is strongly suggested). The strengths of Cornwell's works are the battle scenes, and here you get the sieges of Harfleur and Soissons and of course Agincourt.

You get a good feel for the time and place--London and France--and the mercenary troops that Hook joins. There's a lot of attention to the armor of the period--almost too much attention. There are descriptions that have the donning of armor piece by piece which has the feel of Cornwell showing off his research rather than adding to the story--since it isn't Hook who is wearing the armor. Hook is an exceptionally skilled longbowman, which enables him to rise in the ranks and do more protagonizing, so to speak. We don't get too many novels about the ordinary grunts--those who might be good at their profession, but not great.

Cornwell is a very prolific writer. This is good in ways, but the danger is that sometimes in such cases novels are not always as original and creative as they could be. So in Azincourt we have a love interest, and we have some evil villains. Hook's main enemy is a lunatic priest of noble lineage, a bible-misquoting rapist. For me, this reminded me of Sgt Hakeswill of the Sharpe series who kept reappearing in the novels until, mercifully, Cornwell has him die: Hakeswill quickly began to get very tiresome indeed. If you think about the Sharpe series, what you remember best are the battles, the events and locales: the evil villians--especially Hakeswill--are easily forgotten. That might suggest that in a good historical novel with lots of battles, such as the Sharpe series or Azincourt, you don't need an evil villain in the story to make it interesting. You need to avoid becoming formulaic. Cornwell does not, thank goodness, churn out a new novel every month like some romance writers who epitomize formulaic writing. I didn't see any suggestion that the adventures of Nick Hook will be continued, although if it does continue, and Hook is part of a mercenary troop then Cornwell might be able to take us into less familiar territory--what was going on post-Agincourt? So you get here a mixture of some new characters plus some of Cornwell's previous formulas, and on balance, the novel is one of his best works.

A Ripping Yarn
Having never read any of the Sharpe novels or any of his other books, I came to Cornwell's *Azincourt* (to give it its proper title) without any expectations. And was pleased to find it's a rollicking read - just what I needed between a few rather heavier academic books on Medieval history. A lot of the formulas of popular historical fiction are here - the plucky young hero who with an exceptional skill, the beautiful girl, the evil nemesis, struggles against the odds etc - but Cornwell could give most genre writers a few lessons in pacing, prose style and characterisation. This is good stuff, stirringly told and nicely handled.

The tricky bit with historical fiction is the history - firstly because it's hard to get all the details right and secondly because few agree on what all the details are. On that second point Cornwell has been wise to lean heavily on the two recent works on the Battle of Agincourt by Anne Curry and Juliet Barker. He's tended towards Barker's slightly more traditional reading of the evidence, but the result is a highly realistic and credible reconstruction of a battle that is still the subject of fierce and ongoing debate.

But it's getting the little details right that can be even trickier. At one point, for example, a character expresses surprise that some of the English Lollard heretics had been hanged rather than burnt at the stake. In fact, it was the burning which was unusual: in England heretics had always been hanged until Henry V's persecution of the Lollards.

Small things like that are forgivable, but an author who specialises in novels about historical warfare really needed to get the fine details of Medieval combat, armour and war spot on. In many places it seems Cornwell was a bit confused. A broad brimmed helmet worn by an archer is called a "bascinet", which is actually a tall, brimless helm worn by a man-at-arms. Cornwell seems to think that the segmented fauld that protected a knight's waist was a separate piece of armour (it was actually attached to the breastplate) and has a knight arming by putting his cuisses on his thighs first, then his greaves where it would have been the other way around (so the cuisses with their poleyns on the knees could overlap the greaves on the lower leg). He thinks a mail aventail is a hood of mail worn under the helmet. That's a coif and it had gone out of fashion 100 years before Agincourt; the aventail was a tippet of mail attached to the lower rim of the helmet. He also overstates the lack of visibility in a Fifteenth Century helmet. Yes, they restrict your vision, but not to the extent that you are "half-blinded" as Cornwell imagines. Perhaps it would have been good for the author to have spent a day with a Fifteenth Century re-enactment group before writing, because these small details do make a difference and many of his audience know them down to the finest point.

Minor niggles aside, this is a ripping yarn and one that should dispel any lofty ideas about the reality of Medieval warfare. Recommended holiday reading.

Cornwell tells their story, and nobody does it better.
Here's the situation. You're a peasant, and as we used to say back home, you're so broke you can't pay attention. You're in the middle of a medieval battlefield, filled with rough characters and sharp weapons, with nothing to cover your own precious hide but the clothes on your back. You have one superb weapon --- the English longbow --- but not much in the way of arrows. You also have a long, sharp stick, assuming you haven't burned it for firewood already. On the other side of the line of battle, there is a nobleman, a feudal lord who owns, more or less, the labor of hundreds of people just like you. He's on a horse, wearing a suit of armor that incorporates all of the best technology of the day and worth more than your entire village can produce in 10 years. You've shot your last arrow, and the guy with the armor is coming to crush your skull. A plan would seem to be in order.

This is what you do, if you're lucky enough and strong enough to pull it off. You plant yourself right in front of the galloping, charging horse (nobody said this was going to be easy), stab it with your sharpened stick, and hope that the animal is hurt enough and scared enough to knock its rider clean off. While the knight is still on his back, trapped under the weight of his armor, you find the one weak spot in the armor --- his visor. And then you draw your long hunting knife and stab the no-good wretch right in the eye. Score one for the home team.

That's the reality of medieval warfare. It's savage, messy, and a million miles away from something as comparatively cold and dispassionate as pushing the button that unleashes hundreds of pounds of high explosives from a Predator drone over a terrorist camp. And if you want to bring back that world in fiction, it's not enough to reproduce the strategies of battle and the blood and slaughter that follows in its wake. You have to know the ground --- the sticky French mud that bogged down a huge army, making it vulnerable to barefoot English archers. You have to know the technology --- how the English craftsmen took a piece of yew wood and shaped it into a weapon that changed history. You have to know the dynastic politics that animate the strategy, the engineering of the castles and the religious beliefs that led men into battle.

In other words, it's the kind of thing that Bernard Cornwell has been doing for years --- and nobody does it better.

If you're not familiar with Cornwell's work, you can start with his bestselling novels about the Viking era in England, which follow a ferocious war leader into the shield walls of Alfred the Great. Or you can check out the monumental Richard Sharpe series, which chronicles a Napoleonic War hero from the torture pits of an Indian warlord all the way to a personal confrontation with the Corsican corporal in exile on the lonely island of St. Helena. Both of these series (as well as other Cornwell novels set in the Civil War or the American Revolution) betray a comprehensive knowledge of their respective historical eras --- and, even more important, considerable skill in making the battlefields and characters come to full, comprehensible life.

Cornwell's books are populated with stout, resolute heroes, noble enemies and the treacherous plots of evil men. AGINCOURT is no exception; the differences are largely in the areas of weapons technology, strategy and the intricate details of late medieval life. Its principal hero, longbowman Nicholas Hook, differs from most Cornwell protagonists in his religious faith (notwithstanding that it's hard to be a good Christian when your job description involves stabbing people in the eye).

The story of the climactic battle of Agincourt has been told before, most notably by Shakespeare, who gives King Henry perhaps the most rousing speech in English literature. Cornwell incorporates that speech in his narrative, but it's more of a grace note than anything else. The real work is done in the trenches, by the men with the long bows and the empty stomachs. Cornwell tells their story, and nobody does it better.

--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds