Ne mentionnez pas Agincourt!

Or Waterloo, for that matter!  I mention this, usually unwritten, law because according to the Telegraph there have been wails and shrieks of outrage in La France over the release of a Netflix film based on the (in)famous battle.  The curator of the newly refurbished museum close to the original battlefield has, so to speak, 'gone off on one', of which phrase I am unsure of the correct French translation!

"I'm outraged. The image of the French is really sullied. The film has Francophobe tendencies,” he said, taking offence at Pattinson’s hammed-up take of the French Dauphin Louis de Guyenne, Henry’s nemesis.  “The British far-Right are going to lap this up, it will flatter nationalist egos over there,” he predicted.

English “raping and pillaging” was totally overlooked and the king’s cold-blooded execution of his French prisoners glossed over, despite them having “their throats slit and heads crushed with sledgehammers” or “faces slashed with daggers”.

Doesn't the silly man know that “raping and pillaging” is what we Brits are famous for - how else do you think we aquired an empire?  Needles to say, M. Christophe Gilliot, gives Will Shakespeare a well-deserved slap for historical inaccuracy in his play on the subject, seemingly unaware that Will was in it for the money, not scholorship!

Still 'n' all, as our American cousins say, the fact is that a shambolic, starving, British army floundering around northern France were eventually cornered by a larger French army but still managed to beat the pants off them!  'Zut alors!'

 

 

Comments

[Backofanenvelope]

Many years ago I visited Agincourt. Total waste of time, unless you are a fan of flat farmland. Oddly, there were large-than -life wooden figures of medieval chaps, bursting out of the hedges. The museum was nice, the person in charge was not anti-English.

[Whyaxye]

I'd like to complain about the French-made Bayeux Tapestry. It's completely biased, depicting Harold as an oath-breaker and glorifying Norman cavalry charges against our brave but less well equipped Housecarls. And no mention of the pillaging and genocide that went on later.

It's just the sort of thing that encourages empire-building based in mainland Europe. That tapestry should be cut up and used for dusters.

[David & Son of Duff]

BOE, yes, I agree it is a somewhat boring battlefield but I was glad to see that they had left the bulging woodland on one side of the approach to the British line even if the other side had been cut back over the years. Those two bulges were critical in that it forced the French armoured Knights to crowd together in order to get through. Thus, those damned archers with their ultra-deadly weapon system were offered a mass target so that any shot was almost certain to hit. Sacre Bleu!

[Penseivat]

The written acccount of the battle, when I visited the site about 20 years ago, was very critical of the French battle plan, which I found suprising, considering it was in a French museum. The side stories, such as English bodies being taken back to England in barrels of Malmsey, were also interesting. Perhaps that was just an excuse to exceed the limit of 2 litres of fortified wine? No mention of tobacco.

[Pat]

The point of Agincourt is surely that an army of trouserless peasants beat an army of aristocrats. That the peasants were English and the aristocrats French is secondary.
Why did it take French peasants beat four hundred years to catch on?

[TDK]

At the time of Agincourt, the monarchs of England were still rulers of some part of Normandy. So to some extent this was a battle between Franks and Normans rather than between France and England.