Why did the French knights at Agincourt keep on moving through the narrow opening through arrow fire instead of just moving the spikes protecting the
COMMENTARY:
I am making a guess, based on what little I know of the battle.
These battles were very carefully staged affairs. In Henry V, a major character, a Herald, acts as a military entrepreneur in the French sense of the word as a neutral channel of communications between the opposing commanders. It’s not unlike an ad hoc rugby test during Spring Break between two university teams on break in the Bahamas that begins as a drinking game organized around rum.
Everybody knows the laws of the game and the conflict is regularized regarding weapons and numbers, a difference being that Henry had a Sevens tourning side and France had 15s. And that is agreed by circumstance at Agincourt.
Team Henry V has been touring the South of France, blowing up whatever they couldn’t fuck or steal and were making a dash for the coast, but they hadn’t given up rape and pillage. It was a somewhate sedate dash for the coast and here was Agincourt, ripe for the picking,
France was tired of the whole road show and were determined to recover the loot from the grave yard of Team Henry V.
It was something of the fushion of the opening of Gettysburg and Yorktown. From Team Henry V’s perspective, they just happen to run into France at Agincourt while France’s intention was to end the raid, decisively.
so, comes the Herald, a consultant recognized by trade throughout Europe and he goes to one side from one side and they decide to fight it out in a certain place in a certain manner. The Herald’s role is the same as the referee in the classic Bill Cosby stand-up about the coin toss at the Little Big Horn “Captain Custer, this is Captain Sitting Bowl”.
How the ground was chosen, i don’t know and I have not trod it, but if the French won the toss, they decided on a a bowling alley they could charge down like a IFD assault on Gaza: nothing can withstand their might.
If Team Henry V won the toss, they elected to require the French to forgoe the tactics of the Plains Indians and Gheghis Khan and cannalize themselves into a narrow killing field and anticipate the southern assault on the 3rd day of Gettysburg. Theoretically, all they had to do was ride through a constant barrage of plunging fire until they hit the lances and wipe out the archers.
Only, Chief Sitting Bull won the toss and that’s why it happened the way it did. The decision was made through the Herald. Everything thereafter is writ in blood.