Oh, goodie! After a century of being “allies,” the French are going after the Brits on military matters. And as seems to be terribly popular in the Old World, they’re still cheesed off about things that happened before Columbus even found the Americas.
According to the Mail Online:
To Shakespeare, it was the moment a feckless youth turned into a great king, leading his army to victory against seemingly impossible odds.
But French academics have a very different view of the Battle of Agincourt – claiming that English soldiers acted like ‘war criminals’.
They also accuse King Henry V of giving his permission for captives to be burnt to death and ordering his bodyguards to execute a noble who had surrendered.
…
‘At the very least the English forces acted dishonourably. The Middle Ages were a very violent time, of course, but some might accuse the English of acting like what might now be called war criminals.’
2 Responses to “English heroes of Agincourt? They are just war criminals (popcorn time!)”
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The French are just pissed off about losing to a badly outnumbered opponent.
How about the Battle Of Crecy where the French knights attacked their own Genoese crossbowmen allies for not showing enough suicidal courage when trying to advance against the English longbow archers?
I really can’t find much pity for the noble French knights who allowed themselves to be captured and held for ransom, while the foot soldiers were expected to fight to the death or be branded cowards.
BTW, the French accused the English archers of killing the knights with “strange and ungentlemanly weapons”; this appeared to be a reference to the large lead-headed mallets that the English archers carried to drive in the pointed stakes that protected them from charges by mounted troops.
Some of these things weighed up to 25 pounds.
I don’t know what happens when you bring down a giant lead sledgehammer on the helmet of a fallen French knight, but I’ll bet it’s mighty impressive from a acoustic point of view alone.
“Prithee, tis time to meet my friend El Kabong.”
“Qui? El Kabong?”
KA-BONG!
“I really can’t find much pity for the noble French knights who…”
A) I can’t really find much pity for “nobles” in general. While I don’t subscribe to the obviously-silly notion that all people are created equal, I *do* subscribe to the idea that all people should be equal before the law. And medieval notions of “nobility” fly in the face of that.
B) I can’t gin upa whole lot of either anger or pride over crap that happened 500+ years ago. Hell, anything that happened before 1900 is something that happened without the meaningful assisstance of anyone currently alive today, and thus getting in a snit about it seems ridiculous.