Azincourt by Bernard Cornwell 500pp, 2009 Harper paperback Available at Asia Books and leading book stores, 350 baht
War is hell, but battles won and lost are the stuff of legend. Few countries have the same legends about the conflicts, however. What the Americans most remember about the Pacific War is the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Chinese the rape of Nanking, the Japanese the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In World War II the Americans D-Day, the British the Blitz, the Russians Stalingrad. On occasion, fame came because a poet and/or a playwright wrote about it. The Trojan War is known because of Homer, how accurate a matter of conjecture. Tolstoy’s War and Peace just about sums up our knowledge of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.
Lincoln gave us Gettysburg, Tennyson the Crimean War. Erich Maria Remarque, Rupert Hughes and Ernest Hemingway made certain we wouldn’t forget the First World War. Nelson and Wellington were real enough, but you don’t see the French celebrating their anniversaries. Who would remember the 100 Years War were it not for the Bard?
Shakespeare’s Henry V, whom many are certain resembled Laurence Olivier in the screen version, has since been a national hero only slightly below Richard the Lionheart. To be sure the French won down the road with the help of a peasant girl visionary. Still, Henry’s 1415 epic victory at Agincourt ended the Age of Chivalry.
That the English triumphed is indisputable. Nevertheless historians for six centuries (less the French, who try to pretend it never happened) dispute the margin of victory. Each comes up with different figures for the number of combatants on each side. In his historical novel Azincourt (the Gallic spelling), Bernard Cornwell accepts 6,000 English vs 30,000 French.
Outnumbered five-to-one how did the English, against all odds, win? Largely because 4,000 of the 6,000 had longbows while the French had none. Not that the longbow was a new weapon, having been employed during the Crusades and earlier. But Henry realised it had a quality the French overlooked. The steel-tipped arrows penetrated armour, every knight weighed down by 60 pounds of it. Try to imagine a metal burqa from head to toe.
The author’s protagonist is archer Nicholas Hook, who when not shooting 15 arrows a minute is splitting helmets and heads with a poleaxe. He survives the three-hour battle and wins the fair maiden.
The real hero is Henry V, whose pep talks to his men kept them from despairing that they faced certain death from the flower of the massed French nobility.
Best are the last 50 pages, devoted to historical notes. He quotes Shakespeare’s play, various historians, tells everything worth knowing about the longbow. Azincourt is historical fiction at its best.
Writer: BERNARD TRINK
Published: 14/08/2009 at 12:00 AM
Newspaper section: Realtime
http://www.bangkokpost.com/leisure/book/22038/an-epic-victory
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