"Crecy or Agincourt" Topic

Crecy vrs Agincourt; What do you find more intersting in regardes to historically, miniatures, gaming, painting, etc?

Both!

Damon.

I've painted figures for both periods and really enjoyed it. There's a lot of color and designs on both sides. It's a very rewarding project.

Wargaming-wise, I would imagine that it would be hard for the English to win a historically accurate Agincourt game what with the French heavily outnumbering them and all. Crecy seems more balanced and has more unit types (crossbows, longbows, mounted and dis-mounted men-at-arms, artillery, etc) so I guess Crecy gets my vote for wargaming.

For high drama, though, you can't beat Agincourt.

The important question is when did flicking the V's really start?

"I've painted figures for both periods and really enjoyed it."

Both periods? I thought Crecy and Agincourt were both battles of the 100YW.

Crecy is a much more interesting battle as far as far as I'm concerned. The troops you collect for one battle could easily be used to play both however.

Mike,

In the seventy or so years between the battles, armour and tactics changed, as (I've no doubt) did fashions. Perfectly reasonable to treat them as separate periods when modelling and gaming.

I've not done an Agincourt army per-se but I find the late-mid 15th century armours more interesting and attractive, and I am looking at armies for Italy in that period.

Depends if you like painting heraldic designs or not. For Agincourt, barded/caparisoned horses, shields, jupons and surcoats were less popular, with 'white' armour increasing common. The Crecy period could be very colourful but be aware that alot of the French command had the fleur-de-lis pattern, which for Crecy was the 'ancien' pattern i.e. lots of small ones (could drive you nuts!) whereas for Agincourt, the 'modern' pattern i.e. three big ones.

I first came across Crecy in a young adult novel written by Ronald Welch about an archer in Edward's III army while in grade school. Later in Military History Magazine there was a peice on the battle.

I really didn't know about Agincourt until I saw 'Henry V' on film. About a year ago I finally read Bernard Cornwell's 'Grail Series' in which the first book ends with the Battle of Crecy. Looking forward to his 'Azincourt'.

So I perfer the earlier battle of Crecy but for conflict wise I like the Wars of the Roses over the HYW.

"In the seventy or so years between the battles, armour and tactics changed"

They did? In what ways?

I'm no expert in the Hundred Years War, but off the top of my head, comparing early 15th Century to the first half of the 14th:
- Considerably more plate armour
- Smaller or no shields
- Greater use of two-handed pole weapons to penetrate the heavier armour
- French chivalry tended to fight dismounted rather than mounted
- increased use of artillery by the French (both in the field and at sieges)
- surcoats were no longer worn

The English, with the more successful formula, may not have changed their tactics so much (though their success and the general wealth of England would have allowed them to keep up with more modern trends in armour and fashion) but I believe the proportion of archers increased as time went on. And as these men became increasingly professional, I'd guess that they became better equipped in terms of armour and clothing.

Mike, a vast increase in the technology of plate armour, with a corresponding decrease in the use of mail.

Also, the composition of English armies changed with the rise in the use of the indenture system (decreasing the use of levied/feudal troops) and an increased emphasis on the use of archers and dismounted men-at-arms (MAA) with the number of 'spearmen' (usually Cornish or Welsh) decreasing. English tactics were based (certainly for larger engagements) were based very strongly around the combined use of dismounted MAA and archers – cavalry use reduced significantly.

French armour went through the same development. Their tactics tended (except where too many knights with an overenthusiasm for honour over military expediency got together) towards refusing engagement (not much fun to game!) unless an English army was isolated or on its uppers. They also recognised the threat of archers en masse and came up with strategies to eliminate them first before the glorious part of clashing with foes of equal status.

Advocate – you posted after I started my reply, but I think between us we got all the major points covered :)

I am currently read Peter Reid's

'A Brief History of MEDIEVAL WARFARE; The Rise and fall of English Supremacy at Arms, 1314-1485'

The arthur talks about the change in warfare over the period from the Scottish Wars in the North to the early, middle and late stages of the Hundred Years War till the Wars of the Roses.

A good start point for the period on the warfare side of things.

He does talk about how during the HYW armour, tactics and troop type evoled from Crecy to Agincourt to Castillon.

FYI Surcotes would still be worn during Agincourt, but their use decreased considerably after this period.

Damon.

Crecy = Agincourt is like saying WW1 = Vietnam.

Having said that there were certainly "poorer folk" who might use outdated armour or gear from the earlier period at Agincourt.

w.

Hi

In "years" sure. The reality is that, however, until recent times, one could expect to have seen no change in your lifetime, and no real disconnect between you and your great grandfather, thus the "WW1/vietnam" is not appropriate.

What we do Locally, is have way more figs than we need for either battle, and change the figure mix to fit the era regarding how much plate and the pole arms issue.

The idea bout not being "napoleonic" and getting all obsessed with a single event/army is that the whole period of the HYW has a large number of interesting games/battles available, not just the "big in the press" fights.

Oh, and I am curious about the comment above about how historical rules would keep the english from winning at agincourt? Was that a mistatement? If the rules are historical, should they not likely produce historical results? The brits won the biggies in the press, lost the war.

Rocky

I suspect that the problem with restaging Agincourt is that the French player is likely to know that it is not a good idea to charge all his cavalry into a narrow muddy space at once.

Indeed, how can one reproduce any great tactical blunder without so many restrictions on the player of the blundering side that they have no freedom for their own tactics?

I've seen a few solutions to this. The two approaches that I remember with interest are:

1) playing a sort of two way game, taking it in turns to play each side and having wildly differing victory conditions ('how many knights can you keep alive with them charging foolishly?', 'How quickly can you wipe out the effective French cavalry?'), or

2) by having a cunning scenario writer hide the battle being refought (changing the nationalities – but keeping troop types pretty similar and setting up the terrain in a similar way) so that the same tactical brilliance/stupidity may reappear in players who don't think things through carefully.

Rocky,

As usual, I don't type in enough info!

Mister Rab and Steve Flanagan have covered some of what I meant. What I was (clumsily!) trying to get at is that a wargamer has more "command control" than a historical general and the benfit of hindsight as well. When you look at some of the one-sided upsets in history (Chancellorsville, Fort Ticonderoga in the FIW, Braddock's defeat, etc) it seems like it would be difficult to recreate the historical outcome unless you somehow drastically altered troop morales, numbers of participants, added very complex morale rules, etc or staged a step by step re-creation of the battle.

However, this is an interesting topic and I'm going to take this to another page and make it a seperate discussion before we hijack poor Edward's thread!

here's the link to the discussion:

TMP link

Hi

Oh. I missed it, sorry.

When we were developing Art of War, I was part of a gov think tank run by the Dupuys, and I used their approaches to diddle with our rules to TEST things. Lots of time motion studies and the like. Essentially, I use things like Agincourt becuase of how much we know comparted to most medieval battles to "curve fit" the rules systems to get the results.

For the "game" aspect, I fear that I see Agincourt(and the thread started with "period" not the battle, I thought) as the result of the campaign, not battlefield decisions.

In this case, the revanche determined that the French had to "come at them in the same old way". Thus, it is the campaign decisions that made the battle. Once they are at agincourt, the french have few options on the attack. They must attack to "disprove" the claim of the english king, and they cannot wait and so on. Straight up attack in a position that favors the system the brits are using.

Generally, if we play the battle as a game, we approach it as a "plus/minus" versus the historical results. If you do better you win!

I have a friend who has done Hastings 20 or 30 times over the years. And again, we used this well known fight to test and tweek our rules. H is a battle can can go both ways. Although, my friend carries a long time grudge about ONE fight we had about 20 years ago. Like all gamers we have a few "magic" figs, "high karma" figs that seem to make things happen. My peasant rabble for the "great fyrd" has this Essex Priest in it with a huge bronze cross. Over the decades the results with him are simple. If you attack HIM, you die. Whatever bizzare die rolls it takes for you to fail, you will. So, one battle of Hastings was totally "ruined" in his mind, a heavy norman attacked, did the freaky rules for the failure, failed, ran and took the entire norman side back to the boats with him!

Grin.

But that is gaming.

But I digressed. Back to the subject. I am not attracted to specific battles as re-fights so much as periods and troops and the era surriounding it. The way to "win" at agincourt is to re-do the campaign and try different things.

Some years ago there was a lovely two volume study of the HYW from a military standpoint that went into deapth on all the battles and campaigns. I need to dig it out to list the ISBN…it has been buried for a few years. Anyway, it was done by one of the famous british historians and makes a facinating read as opposed to just looking AT the individual battle.

R

Neither. There were no Templars left by then =D