#46, Battle of Agincourt: The Mud-Soaked Massacre That Made the Longbow Legendary
Agincourt on October 25, 1415, killed between 7,000 and 10,000 French soldiers against just 112 English dead, a casualty ratio so extreme it transformed European military doctrine. Henry V's exhausted, dysentery-ridden army of 6,000 (5,000 of them longbowmen) annihilated a French force of 12,000 to 36,000 armored knights and men-at-arms on a narrow, rain-soaked field in northern France.
The French nobility charged across 300 yards of freshly plowed mud, their heavy plate armor sinking into the mire while 5,000 English longbows launched 60,000 arrows per minute into the compressed mass. Knights who reached the English line were too exhausted to fight. Entire ranks of French aristocracy, dukes, counts, and barons, were killed or captured. The flower of French chivalry was literally trampled into the mud. Henry ordered the execution of French prisoners when a rumored counterattack threatened his rear, a controversial decision that added hundreds more to the death toll. Agincourt proved that armored cavalry supremacy, the dominant military paradigm for 500 years, could be negated by disciplined ranged infantry and favorable terrain.
