1415: The French Disaster Of Agincourt | Medieval Dead | Chronicle

[Music] northern france an english force ragged and cut off prepares to fight its way to safety [Music] blocking the way is the finest army medieval france has ever assembled [Music] the french noblemen are confident of victory and feel nothing can stand against them but this day in october 1415 will not be theirs six centuries later experts are now examining what we really know about one of the most famous events of the middle ages the battle of agincourt the agincourt is about bravery but it's also about glory somewhere around here there are thousands of to death from the battle of ajinko and find out how the day became the most terrible disaster the french nobility had ever known they have no idea that they're actually fighting for their lives the medieval world the fifth to the 15th century a team of archaeologists investigates medieval life by exploring the world of the medieval dead we have a classic view of the storybook medieval life we don't hear the stories about the common man trying to keep his family alive in our stores there are hundreds if not thousands of skeletons archaeologically speaking we can now focus in on the medieval dead people you're looking for clues in the skeleton all the time and you couldn't help almost look through their eyes thinking what did they see how did they die this unlucky battle was fought between the villages of azenkor and russiaville in the year of our lord 1450 on the day of saint crispin and chris pinion the battle on october the 25th 1415 is perhaps the best known in english history agincourt or azanco was henry v's great victory it cemented the young king's reign and turned the tide of english fortunes in a hundred years war against france the story of agincourt comes to us from several contemporary sources henry v had invaded france to recapture lands he believed were right for the english his army besieged the port of our fleur but many of his men were struck down by distance with weakened troops and the winter approaching henry turned north and headed for the english base at callum a huge french army now masked to cut off the english withdrawal some claim that as many as 40 or even 60 000 knights and men at arms stood against henry v's army of a fraction of this number perhaps just five or six thousand the confident french knights advanced to what they assumed would be certain glory thousands of armored men charged forward across the narrow battlefield most of henry's troops were archers only lightly armored if at all yet they were experts with one of the deadliest weapons of the medieval the longboard the english archers rained down folly after vori of arrows on the french knights who fell into panic and chaos in the night where trapped and help us they were either killed or captured it was the stop of legend and quickly formed the mythic family of an england with a newly emergent sense of nation [Music] the battle of ajiko sums up what people perceive of the medieval period in terms of battles it was supposed to be the classic one where the the outnumbered few managed to win and therefore it's it's rich mythical proportions in terms of you know anything is possible it was henry v victory somehow winning through against all the odds i think agincourt is possibly most people's minds the most famous medieval battle especially in england because it's reached mythical status thanks to william shakespeare it's the archetypal stereotypical battle so there is the underdog of the english that managed to win and of course the nasty friendship are seen off the battlefield and of course it suits the english frame of mind this is anything is possible and this is what happened in as you go in 1415. this is broadly the way agincourt was viewed for many years for centuries even it wasn't until relatively recently that historians began looking into the real story professor anne curry is the world's leading expert on the documented sources relating to agincourt her starting point was the size of the two armies present at the battle the assumed view often taken is that the french had a huge army of tens of thousands of men outnumbering the tiny english army but few if any researchers had gone back to the existing records to verify this many of henry v army famously were archers and began by looking for records of these men the received wisdom was that we didn't know the names of the archers who were at the battle of agincourt it was thought we knew the names of the men at arms because of what's known as the agincourt role which is an early 17th century transcript i made it my mission to go to the national archives to look at all of the original source materials this was a paid army so we had a lot of pay records in the exchequer files and made it my missionary to find out the names of the people on the campaign the files revealed just how many men henry v assembled for the campaign in france england didn't have a standing army at this point however it had enough military activity to make it possible to be a professional soldier for the agincourt campaign the army that set out out to go there we know the names of at least seven and a half thousand people of what was probably an army uh over eleven thousand perhaps nearly twelve thousand finding out exactly how many men were at the battle on the 25th of october 1415 is more difficult yet from anne's work it can be estimated that henry's army possibly numbered around eight or nine thousand more than the smaller force of perhaps five or six thousand suggested in the past also it seems the french army was not quite as large as many have suggested looking at the french army is much more complicated than looking at the english army we have some financial records but we just don't have us as as much because after all the french are on the defensive and they would no doubt hope to have as many troops as they possibly uh could raise safe from towns and things of that sort but one very useful indication is the amount of money that they were raising we have one very important document where charles vi ordered the raising of money to support an army of nine thousand men that was going to be made up of six thousand men at arms and three thousand gender tree that could include longbowmen and uh crossbowmen you see immediately the reversal you like of the english ratio we've got two men at arms to every one archer effectively in the the french army so i believe that the idea was to have a 9 000 strong army it would have added to that so maybe we could get it up to about 12 000 but it's really hard to see how it could have been larger than that these ideas of forty thousand sixty thousand just are not credible in the light of french army sizes uh in this period but it would have been men at arms heavy and it would have been aristocratic but i think you've got to remember the english army was also aristocratic there really isn't that much difference we have this idea of the english army being full of tommies if you like you know popular army and the french army being sort of you know ray henry's in fact they socially they are quite similar to each other in terms of equipment they are very similar to each other and also the thing that people forget too is the french have had to move huge distances too everybody misses that out as if they've already you know flown into aging court remember they also are moving long distances they would be weary they will be running out of food as well in late october 1415 the two armies more evenly matched than was previously thought were engaged in a pursuit through piccadilly in northern france henry needed to get his troops back to english controlled territory it does seem that henry after taking half fleur decides that he will withdraw to calais all of the sources seem to agree on that i don't think he was battle seeking he thought it would take eight days to get from hafler to calais of course it took a lot longer because they didn't dare cross the somme crossing the river some would take time and leave an army vulnerable the english had to try and stay one step ahead the french army is sort of shadowing them on the other bank and therefore it takes a long time before the english can get ahead and get across the river so i think we've got to say here that he is trying to get away and the french are trying to to hound him he is scared at that point to engage with the french karen watts of britain's royal armouries has studied the french army of the early 15th century the french you've got a totally different attitude with regard to this oncoming battle that they know is going to happen they think they're going to a party they think they're going to a grand tournament there has actually been a tournament only 15 years earlier a few miles away called the tournament of santingova in which the english and the french during a truce in the hundred years war jousted together and in fact the french commander of agincourt was one of the great tournament leaders of this tournament of st goldberg 15 years earlier so the french think they've come to a wonderful tournament dressed in their best armor the latest gear for many of the french nobility it was the opportunity of a lifetime they stream toward agincourt from all over northern france eager not to miss out on catching the fleeing english the composition of the french army was different to be english the french anticipated that the battle would be fought on foot between the men at arms on both sides and they reckoned they had the advantage in having larger numbers of men at arms the french they do have a plan to send a group of cavalry against the archers to override the the archers they're trying to eliminate henry's advantage which is that he could lose arrows against the advancing french and try to damage as many of them before they engage to knock them out before they can get to the english lines it seems that the french did not have as large a cavalry group against the archers as they'd intended because the knights and gentry wanted to be in the melee they didn't they didn't see any glory in riding down archers they're expecting a glorious amount of hand-to-hand combat with the opposing english army and above all hoping to have hand-to-hand combat with the english nobility and above all the english king but this was unlike any tournament the french nobleman had experienced in less than an hour or two they the flower of french chivalry is decimated this comes as an utter shock and a surprise their own brothers their fathers are dying before them earls dukes counts are all falling and at this point they're still trying to pretend that they are noble and chivalrous and you find a number of the high nobility offering their gauntlets as surrender because they're expecting to be captured if they surrender they'll be captured they'll be ransomed they'll be all right they're in no great danger they're not going to actually die not if they they give themselves up these french knights have completely misjudged and misunderstood the battle in which their they find themselves they have no idea that they're actually fighting for their lives with a high proportion of nobles fighting in the front lines of both armies many of the french killed were aristocrats this was unusual for a medieval battle most of the dying was usually done by common soldiers this has a massive consequence for immediate french history because there are no airs and france becomes massively weakened and decimated and unable to provide male heirs for i would say 50 to almost 100 it has an effect to almost a century later this one battle anne curry believes the numbers involved have been exaggerated at the time of the battle france was a nation divided by civil war between the burgundians and the armagnacs contemporary accounts from both sides vary in their estimates of the numbers killed probably for political reasons adjunct was a disaster for one party of the french there were quite a number of burgundian deaths it is extremely difficult to know the actual number that died but i don't think numbers like 5800 which is put in the burgundian chronicles those seem just as exaggerated as the uh the numbers of of of troops maybe you know one and a half thousand would be a a reasonable figure even for the english as well i mean some english sources imply you know it's sort of 10 people others about 400 or whatever so perhaps of all the things we all the difficulties we have with figures the the dead is going to be the most difficult one to know whatever the exact number it was a very heavy defeat for the french king henry himself claimed god must have been with the english that day to punish the french churches and cathedrals across england bear two methods and memorials to the veterans of agincourt in france there are relatively few on the field itself there are no memorials dating back to the time of the battle to this day no one knows exactly where in these fields the last resting place is of the many frenchmen who died here it's this very absence of graves that drew tim sutherland's attention he's an archaeologist and battlefield specialist he's best known for his work at another medieval battlefield towton in yorkshire northern england agincourt is a much more widely known and written about battle than towton so when he became involved here tim expected his research to be relatively straightforward we're going into an environment where we think we know everything it's a classic story shakespeare has covered it every historian of name who deals with military history has covered agincourt and so we went in there thinking it was going to be a piece of cake he had no idea that he'd embarked on an investigation that would last for more than a decade at towton tim oversaw the excavation of a mass grave following its accidental discovery he knew such grave pits also had to exist here at agincourt but before he could excavate them he had to try to find them in 2002 he and metal detector expert simon richardson carried out a major survey of the supposed battle area they found and plotted a range of finds but found almost nothing medieval nor anything relating to 1415 tim was frustrated but he was hooked in 2007 he and simon returned this time the idea was to target the area around the calvary or calvare near the center of the battlefield from his research tim found that the 19th century monument commemorated a local family but also that it happened to be on the site where many of the french dead from 1415 were traditionally thought to have been buried when we first came here we did some primary metal detecting surveys across the whole length of the battlefield but also we targeted the area around the calvary where we are now standing primarily because we weren't initially allowed to do any archaeological work inside the the areas of the enclosure at all as part of the archaeological survey in the geophysical survey we started to find lumps of bumps geophysical anomalies but just outside the calvary here there was a very large metal anomaly buried quite deeply below the surface of the soil and of course that means that we targeted as an area of potential excavation the anomaly seemed to indicate a large amount of buried ferrous material tim had only found small artifacts and no armor at towton though he was fully aware of the mass graves at visby and gotland where many men had been buried still wearing their armor it was rare to find armor but could it happen again here at agincourt accounts suggest henry v had some of the armor from the defeated french buried or burned to save it from the enemy the problem was that we didn't know what this metal anomaly was it was a huge ferrous blob on an archaeological geophysical survey and it was it had to be investigated because we knew it was very deeply buried and of course there are all sorts of rumors about uh henry v burying pits full of arms and armor that he collected from the french so in the vacuum mind you think is this possibly it it's a huge hole and it contains a large amount of ferrous or iron material so of course we had to go and target it and that's correct we finally excavated a large hole deeper deeper it got down to about three feet deep and then we were metal detecting as we went and then just beyond the depth of a spade this ferrous metal anomaly turned up on the metal detector we thought this is it whatever it is it could be an unexploded bomb it could be a buried tractor it could be absolutely anything and then we slowly uncovered it and it was a pipe from a drilling rig that was fractured off and was deeply buried right in the ground underneath our feet and it didn't make any sense at all a steel pipe may extending down for hundreds of feet had created a huge ferrous signature one we were very deflated and two we didn't know what it was and then of course we talked to the landowners and then one of them came over and said ah i remember that in the 1960s they were drilling here for oil and nobody told us and everybody had forgotten and so that answered one of the questions about what the geophysical survey normally was then somehow out of the disappointment came opportunity now that had a knock-on effect because everybody felt so sorry for us that that finally the the landowner allowed us to do some archaeological excavation inside the calvary enclosure itself it was too good a chance to miss and normally wouldn't have been possible tim knew that this site was chosen for the calvare because it had previously been the site of a chapel which might have been built in commemoration of the 1415 graves it was destroyed during the french revolution but tim wondered if traces of it might still exist and possibly provide clues to the lost graves in the height of summer this is almost impenetrable so the first thing we had to do is clear the whole enclosure so we streamed it all out and cut it all back and then we started to do a geophysical survey straight away they found evidence of war but not of the kind they were expecting just below the surface are sometimes lying on the surface there was a series of metal artefacts and some of them were first world war bullets and so there were second world war bullets and there were badges and coins and all sorts of things and basically people have been using this enclosure for whatever reason over the last 50 hundred years through both the first and second world wars so of course people have been coming to this enclosure and also visiting it because it's an archaeological site of interest and it all focuses on this cross here investigating this area trying to understand it is very important in terms of what how it fits into the landscape of the button the calvaire had seen a lot of history but so far none of it seemed to relate to 1415 undaunted they recorded the surface finds and began to dig we started off by putting a large trench across the entranceway because when we first walked in here there was some stones evidence and protruding above the ground and in that trench we found a series of stones and bricks with some lead casting in it which obviously held the railings and so it looked like it was an entrance way to something that had a metal gate in it subsequently we found postcard it actually still shows a photograph of the gates in situ which was nice we tried to date it and unfortunately it was built of the same bricks that the chapel would have been built up in the 18th century and so we couldn't really date it so finding that photograph was quite nice in that it looked more of a you know 19th century gateway therefore they just use old build materials probably lying around the site encouraged by the 18th century remains they kept digging expecting at any moment to find the medieval graves but again it wasn't so simple every place we put a test bit within the enclosure here we came down onto almost pure soil there's nothing in it a few fragments of brick and very little else certainly no archaeological evidence of human remains or large pits of ever contained human rights within this enclosure now that's very strange because everybody thought it did and so we have this anomaly where are the french dead from agincourt tim had to search for other evidence other clues in the history of this area that might open up a new line of inquiry it's then that he found that someone else had been there before him all this time he'd been walking in the footsteps of another archaeologist and possibly the first ever battlefield archaeologist in 1818 lieutenant colonel john woodford was a british officer serving with the army of occupation following the defeat of napoleon at waterloo with a lifelong interest in history woodford took the opportunity when stationed nearby to carry out his own investigations on the site of this famous battlefield the only person we know who's archaeologically excavated in this area is john george woodford and that was in 1818 and he came along after the battle of waterloo with a troop of men about 60 apparently and he carried out some archaeological excavations and he found mass graves and in the mass graves with gold coins with arrowheads fragments of iron that he describes and drew and uh and obviously related to the battle of agincourt and these were the dead from the battle of agincourt now of course what the problem is now is we don't know where he excavated the excavation site has long since been lost after all hardly any record existed that it had ever taken place the artifacts that woodford found have it seems also been lost in england tim follows the trail to find out more no one before him has tried to put all these pieces together at warwickshire's county archive he's found some vital clues he's been drawn here by a series of letters in a collection that belonged to the nudigate family somehow this included a series of letters that woodford wrote during his excavations at agincourt the nudi gay collection from which this comes from is uh one of our biggest collections oh right the nudi gets would have known a lot of families have quite an important family and clearly i think they were family that were very interested in in history and culture and art which may have explained their interest in this material they probably would have been interested to to see the letters relating to aging yes certainly so obviously yes these uh before before and after the time he's attaching core he was quite prolific in writing to his brother and so they were very close yeah so of course obviously he's uh he's conveying the excitement of the fines absolutely to his brother and he calls him my dear a which is like he was alexander and so he was saying you know what he's been finding et cetera et cetera so there's there's his name john george woodford yeah to a my dearest day yeah june the 19th yeah so he's writing he's writing to his brother on the day after the battle 400 years after agincourt in 1815 lieutenant colonel woodford and his brother major alexander woodford survived the greatest battle of their own times waterloo if you've survived the battle of waterloo one of the first things you do is you're at home and tell your parents and your brother everybody else that's uh that you are okay but it's the agincourt letters from three years later in 1818 that tim wants to see they're the records of the only other excavation at the battlefield describing the only known finds to have been made including the gold eq so this is one of the woodford letters this is the one that i'm quite interested in because the sketch of the coin here and this was one of the coins that george woodford found during the excavations so this gold coin that woodford is describing here on the uh february the 20th 1818 this is while he's undertaking the excavations attaching core and he's writing to his brother and he's done a little quite a nice little very detailed it is actually yeah and then this coin went on to have its own life and disappear into an archive of another stately home now as far as i know these two drawings are the only record of what uh woodford found in during his excavations it's a primary document it's an archaeological document as well now because these sketches that tells you exactly the size and so this is all we now have of any of the information that's related to woodford's excavations in 1818 and everything else the exact description of how we found it where we found it it's all gone remains a mystery yes so this is what i've been chasing and this is it's really nice to see this in the flesh so you speak obviously he's taking a lot of time over it and he was very obviously very proud of it because he says in the letter that you won't believe my look i found several gold coins with these letters we're we're we're honing in homing in on the uh on the detail that woodford was providing i mean he was making quite detailed notes and diaries and things and that's what we do as archaeologists today woodford's dig at agincourt caused controversy among some french locals for what they saw was the despoiling of the graves the letters show though that his intention was always to give the bones a proper re-burial now the french say that uh woodford was ordered to leave by the duke of wellington but we know that wellington asks him quite politely please you know you're making too much of a fuss please leave the the area rather frustratingly there's no scale on this no it didn't so he says he's a bit limiting i have ordered an open sarcophagus [Music] for the bones now is that is that this big or is it a proper sarcophagus is it a coffin sized one would suggest it's slightly larger than the wood sarcophagus suggests a proper burial uh container yeah this is provided the design and the dimensions elsewhere hasn't it i have played it with the mayor and curie to deposit them imagine called church yard so he's even cleared it with the uh with the church he said right basically can i rebury them in the church yard and he's saying and they're saying yes he's doing right by everybody as much as he can do and then we get to hear later from the french that this this box that woodford ordered is then the bones are finally collected put in this box and then buried in the church yard in the correct place but this isn't the general story that is available the general story is he was a bit of a buddy yes and uh he was uh who's obviously slighting the french name and the french couch and leaving bones yeah it's pure french spin now we know because of this letter that it was it was woodford that instigated this the french have always claimed that they did it right he was going to have a stone memorial a piece of marble made with a date 14 15 on it something very simple he says so that it's not glorifying you know either side yes uh just as a simple memorial and then he says all this and he's writing to his brother and his brother was very religious right so he's not going to lie to him blatantly he might have embellished the truth a little bit but basically he's telling him what he was planning to do so this is again this is an important document because it gives one person's view and obviously he's dead and his opinion has been slurred you know slighted and almost you know distorted beyond recognition but having the primary document saying what his thoughts were to his own brother is fantastic i think tim believes the letters aren't the only thing that woodford may have left behind there is an excavation diary that goes with this right explaining in great detail how he did the work at agincourt and what he dug up what he found how he recorded it and where it all went to including more annotated sketches and of course that diary the excavation diary is it's missing unfortunately the diary that you're referring to isn't isn't there because he would have kept that himself he and so this is the the detective side of the story and it's unraveling the truth and this is why i like it because i like the fact as an archaeologist i like looking at the facts and the facts are he's done a nice little drawing he's got the drawing of the coin the arrow ahead he's trying to make good what he's doing by recording it and that's as archaeologists that's all we do today we take photographs record it and uh and because we're destroying the primary evidence so seeing the primary evidence from 1818 is fascinating but it still doesn't get us any closer to where to where this diary is tim then finds a clue as to what could have happened to the missing diary relating to when the items from the collection were placed in storage in london somebody's made a note and this is much later yes and it says said john woodford re digging field of agincourt all he found lost in the burning of the pantechnican the pantechnican was the original storage house that's where we get the name pantechnic and van from and that was the name of the pam technicon was the original storage house in london and apparently it all burnt down and it was like a bazaar it was uh not only a storage place but obviously like people bought and sold it's like an antiques trading sort of place almost and this starts to make sense now but somebody's actually qualified this and why they put it on here i don't know because these letters survive one of the gold coins survives so everything wasn't lost no clearly not so whenever the archive went into the pantechnican it must have already been uh separated yeah well this material was sent to his brother wasn't it so this may have been separate but the coin survived as well yeah so that wasn't centered technically either so there are things that survived so did the diary did the diary get burnt in the pan technician then no oh well that would explain it's absolutely and so it might not exist anymore along with many of the other artifacts so maybe that's a simple explanation about where everything's gone to including the reference to the goal rings yes that'd be terrible [Music] so maybe it's come forever woodford's diary may be missing but he did also produce a sketch map of the battlefield it's very accurate to the roads and terrain displaying all his skill as a former staff officer to the duke of wellington woodford plotted the french and english armies but where did he find his information on their dispositions it prompts tim to check out all the known references that woodford could have used and curry may be able to help clear up some of the confusion surrounding what we know or think we know about agincourt the earliest map tim can find that shows agincourt battlefield is the cassini map from the 18th century almost 400 years after the battle right from the start there are problems with this what we need to look at are the original sources of the map the the cartographic evidence because of course we've got 400 years where there are no maps whatsoever in which case if we look at the first map and obviously that's the cassini map from the mid-18th century yeah the only representation of the battle on that is one of the sword symbols the cassini map only refers to the approximate location of the battlefield through her research and could find no diagram or plan of the actual engagement itself until well into the 19th century what this i believe is the first printed attempt to plan the battle and this was in harris nicholas's history of the battle of agincourt the second edition of 1832. it's a bit problematic because it seems to be the wrong way around it seems to put agincourt on the right hand side the battle is shown on the west of the village of agincourt so is this wrong well nobody else has ever followed it up no it does well although there are elements of this in other maps all the later maps from the mid-19th century almost to the present day seem to have used this as their inspiration before adding their own individual details a lot of these are artistic representations of what people are thinking about at the time there are very few maps that show it like that i mean the tradition as it developed in the 19th century shows it in the traditional positions with the woods agincourt to the the west trump court to the east if all the later maps follow harris nichols 1832 map then where did harris nichols get his information only one detailed battle map is known to have existed before 1832. well this is the earliest map that we know of and it's also one of the most accurate and this is the one that was drawn by woodford in 1818 woodford has superimposed his interpretation of the battle in this on this map and of course what we have is now the standard format of what we would recognize as the battle of agincourt we don't know whether that influenced say nicholas's diagram exactly 1832 the only problem from the study of agincourt point of view is that all of the things woodford has marked on here are in his own mind they're no more reliable than the chronicle text exactly woodford probably based his own interpretation on the texts that were available to him at the time in the early 19th century many of the chronicles that are now standard references for agincourt weren't translated until anne's work in the 1990s the chronicles of raphael holland's head were in most gentlemen's libraries so i think that's where he got the information from so it's not until we find the physical evidence of of this battle so with numbers of arrowheads numbers of artifacts numbers of whatever it is even numbers of bodies and bones in a specific place can we target this area and say right this is part of the battlefield we know that it is until then to be honest agincourt only exists in our minds really from reading this and looking at these maps it's still an interpretation and an interpretation only exists in the mind until you find something to tie it will never be known exactly how many french soldiers died most of them probably still lie in the fields near here somewhere the mass of french infantry made a perfect target hundreds thousands of english archers bent their backs and loosed their foes unleashing an arrow storm henry v knew full well that the longbow in the hands of trained english archers was the weapon to be most feared in the battlefields of the hundred years war he would have known the effectiveness of arrow and arrow storm or of use of arrows in a punctuated fashion as well and he was wounded in the face by an arrow at the battle of shrewsbury the english king was unlikely to have forgotten the painful experience of having the arrow removed over several days i think it's realized just how useful those troops are because they're terribly versatile we've seen them at agincourt in a perfect situation for the arrow storm but they have many other uses also as i say they have a use in the melee too with their last arrows loosed the english archers would have joined the men at arms in the final palmell assault on the beleaguered friendship back in france tim now goes in search of a few of them there's one last place he wants to look tim knows woodford found some of the agincourt dead but exactly how many is unknown until the excavation diary is perhaps one day rediscovered yet what happened to the bones woodford found in the years after the day there were french claims that woodford planned to use them to celebrate an english triumph at agincourt [Applause] tim's research has shown that this was not the case what we need to do is we need to find this date inscribed on the wall of the church it's 1838. this marks the location according to a certain document that of where the human remains were buried in the churchyard that woodford excavated from the from the mass graves it's potentially the end of a long line of investigations it's we've been tracking woodford we've been tracking his excavations we've been attempting to find out where his excavations took place and then of course these are the human remains that were found in the grave and then they were transposed from the battlefield transposed down onto the village into the churchyard i've never looked for this date and i've never looked at the piece of ground we'll go to the the chapel and see if we can find this date somewhere on the wall of the church john george woodford who in his 90s was the last british officer who'd served at waterloo to die perhaps knew something of what it meant to have experienced the most terrible battle of an era he intended to rebury the bones with simple dignity tim sutherland is the only other archaeologist to have searched for the agincourt graves so almost 200 years on it's fitting that he's here now to look for the last piece of the puzzle it's closely associated with a window so it should be easy enough to find but it's not there it's not not on that one i presume it was some they were marking the walls to make some sort of recognition and so they could recognize the spot again and here's a blocked up and there it is there's the 18 38. that's the spot according to the story that's the place where the human remains were buried and it's not it's not a large area so and it's also part of the path going through past this window so presumably it's a small amount of human remains it's not gonna be a huge casket so it's interesting and maybe they're still there i presume they are still there so after all that weight in the grave until 1818 and then they come out of the grave and they collected together and finally make their way into consecrated ground in this churchyard in the village of ajinko and they never quite made it into the especially built memorial chapel to the battle it's quite sad in a way but at least we found it i think that's important [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

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Keywords: history documentary, medieval history documentary, middle ages, medieval history, the middle ages, agincourt battle, agincourt documentary, battle of agincourt henry v, medieval archaeology news, weird history, british history show, historys biggest battles, battle history, henry v documentary, english vs french, history of war, medieval history show

Id: PbmdgqN3ZFs

Length: 46min 4sec (2764 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 25 2021