Battle of Agincourt, 25 October 1415

English Right Flank

Steve put on a 6mm game of the Battle of Agincourt, running from Friday 5th July and scheduled to finish the following Friday 12th July..

Prime motivation for the game was to test out new archery rules for his medieval rules and judging by the first week these seem to have been pretty successful.

Mike W. and Mark took the role of the stout Englishmen, Mark taking the right flank and Mike W. the left flank. Each flank consisting of 5 units of archers, each of six bases.

A village on each flank
of the battlefield

In the centre were 3 units of English dismounted knights. these played no role in the fighting in week one...

On the French side there were three battles of troops, the Vanguard was made-up of archers, with Genoese Crossbowmen on the left flank and also some dismounted knights and men at arms in the centre left.

Second battle, the main force was of 5 or 6 units of mounted knights, Sergeants and others and in the third battle were about 4 units of militia / levy troops to make up numbers in the French Army.

The French were capably commanded by Mike N., Dave, Nigel and Rupert.

Game started with the English moving up in to range and finding the French units in an unready state - their commanders having left them to get breakfast, they rush back to get the individual units in the battle ready by throwing a D8 per battle.

Mike N, French Commander

The English take advantage of this confusion and pour arrows into the front ranks of the enemy,on the right the archers are targeting Genoese crossbowmen and dismounted knights at long range and they chip away at their numbers but due to their good morale they are able to take quite a lot of damage.

On the English left the story is different, firing against out-ranged French archers, the English do greater damage and due to their poorer morale and a lucky hit on the French commander in that area the French units start to crumble quite quickly.

French knights close with the English lines

Retreat turns to rout and this is compounded by the replacement commander also being brought down, soon the whole right wing of the French Vanguard is in rout. The English cheer their good luck,only to realise that they have cleared the way for the French cavalry in the Second Battle to charge in!

French Knights and Sergeants
of the Second (main) Battle

Week One ends with French Cavalry closing in on the English Archers as their pour arrows into them and in the French Centre-Left,Foot knights trudge towards the English lines,followed by other foot units behind them...

John, commanding French 

... Week Two picked-up with Phil taking command of the English centre, made-up of dismounted knights and John substituting for Rupert who was running late on the night, on the French side.

The Mounted French knights pushed forward on their right flank, whilst in their left flank their dismounted knights and bowmen pushed forwards, through the hail of arrows.

On the French right, one unit if Super Heavy knights made fleeting contact with the English lie, however they were shot-out and forced to retire.

Advancing French, from the English perspective

The Genoese Crossbowmen continued to inflict casualties on Mark's stout bowmen, forcing the unit on the extreme right to fall back.

It took a couple more rounds of firing to have effect but the French had had enough, units started to buckle and become more and more disordered, disorder turned to retire ant then rout as commanders fell.

The game ended with over half the French army in rout, the English were victorious!


Pictures of combatants, from a local Agincourt museum.