Agincourt: A Novel by Bernard Cornwell
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Book Reviews of Agincourt: A Novel
Book Review: Cornwell tells their story, and nobody does it better.
Summary: 5 Stars
Here's the situation. You're a peasant, and as we used to say back home, you're so broke you can't pay attention. You're in the middle of a medieval battlefield, filled with rough characters and sharp weapons, with nothing to cover your own precious hide but the clothes on your back. You have one superb weapon --- the English longbow --- but not much in the way of arrows. You also have a long, sharp stick, assuming you haven't burned it for firewood already. On the other side of the line of battle, there is a nobleman, a feudal lord who owns, more or less, the labor of hundreds of people just like you. He's on a horse, wearing a suit of armor that incorporates all of the best technology of the day and worth more than your entire village can produce in 10 years. You've shot your last arrow, and the guy with the armor is coming to crush your skull. A plan would seem to be in order.
This is what you do, if you're lucky enough and strong enough to pull it off. You plant yourself right in front of the galloping, charging horse (nobody said this was going to be easy), stab it with your sharpened stick, and hope that the animal is hurt enough and scared enough to knock its rider clean off. While the knight is still on his back, trapped under the weight of his armor, you find the one weak spot in the armor --- his visor. And then you draw your long hunting knife and stab the no-good wretch right in the eye. Score one for the home team.
That's the reality of medieval warfare. It's savage, messy, and a million miles away from something as comparatively cold and dispassionate as pushing the button that unleashes hundreds of pounds of high explosives from a Predator drone over a terrorist camp. And if you want to bring back that world in fiction, it's not enough to reproduce the strategies of battle and the blood and slaughter that follows in its wake. You have to know the ground --- the sticky French mud that bogged down a huge army, making it vulnerable to barefoot English archers. You have to know the technology --- how the English craftsmen took a piece of yew wood and shaped it into a weapon that changed history. You have to know the dynastic politics that animate the strategy, the engineering of the castles and the religious beliefs that led men into battle.
In other words, it's the kind of thing that Bernard Cornwell has been doing for years --- and nobody does it better.
If you're not familiar with Cornwell's work, you can start with his bestselling novels about the Viking era in England, which follow a ferocious war leader into the shield walls of Alfred the Great. Or you can check out the monumental Richard Sharpe series, which chronicles a Napoleonic War hero from the torture pits of an Indian warlord all the way to a personal confrontation with the Corsican corporal in exile on the lonely island of St. Helena. Both of these series (as well as other Cornwell novels set in the Civil War or the American Revolution) betray a comprehensive knowledge of their respective historical eras --- and, even more important, considerable skill in making the battlefields and characters come to full, comprehensible life.
Cornwell's books are populated with stout, resolute heroes, noble enemies and the treacherous plots of evil men. AGINCOURT is no exception; the differences are largely in the areas of weapons technology, strategy and the intricate details of late medieval life. Its principal hero, longbowman Nicholas Hook, differs from most Cornwell protagonists in his religious faith (notwithstanding that it's hard to be a good Christian when your job description involves stabbing people in the eye).
The story of the climactic battle of Agincourt has been told before, most notably by Shakespeare, who gives King Henry perhaps the most rousing speech in English literature. Cornwell incorporates that speech in his narrative, but it's more of a grace note than anything else. The real work is done in the trenches, by the men with the long bows and the empty stomachs. Cornwell tells their story, and nobody does it better.
--- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds
Book Review: Cornwell continues his conquest of history...
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of Bernard Cornwell's best offerings. I will concede that I don't read his Sharpe series nor his Starbuck series (I just don't care for those periods of history), but I enjoy all his other works & this is among his best. Here is the tale of Azincourt (the word may have been anglicized to Agincourt, but the place is Azincourt), the story that Shakespeare popularized in Henry V. Cornwell sticks almost entirely to historical fact in this tale, with a few concessions made in the historical note. But this tale is a strong historical telling through the eyes of fictional characters. The maps included in this are much better than in some of Cornwell's previous offerings.
Cornwell tells the tale of Nick Hook, a man with personal demons & enemies that are always near. Hook, due to a failed attempt at murder, is exiled & an archer in the English army. He uses the skill that he honed his entire life to use the English longbow with deadly accuracy. On his first journey to France, he saves a beautiful young woman during the vicious attack on Soissons & the two travel back to England. Defying punishment for returning, Nick is placed under a great Lord of England & meets the King.
Traveling to France with Henry to claim what Henry believes is his rightful crown, Nick watches the historical battles & sieges that have now become legend. With the assistance of 2 saints who speak to Nick, he becomes a leader of archers & is on the front lines of the battle at Azincourt, one of the greatest military accomplishments in history. Cornwell's ability to develop characters through whom we see the story unfold is at its best here. Nick is a real person, a man with fears & hopes. His struggle amongst the muck and mire of the battlefield in Azincourt is told with overwhelming grit & gore; Cornwell pulls no punches in telling of the horrors of battle in the middle ages.
For fans of Cornwell, homage is paid to archer Thomas of Hookton from Cornwell's Grail Quest Trilogy (The Archer's Tale, Vagabond & Heretic). I highly recommend that Trilogy, from the same period of time as this work, for those that enjoy this. I would also, in the spirit of this work, highly recommend Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles (The Last Kingdom, The Pale Horseman, Lords of the North & Sword Song, a series not yet complete & I eagerly await Vol. 5) & his Arthur Series.
I suggest a quick read of the historical note at the end of the book BEFORE you read this as it will provide setting & circumstances which led to the battles. Cornwell notes 3 historical works about Azincourt & I plan to read each; they are 'Agincourt: A New History' by Anne Curry, 'The Face of Battle' by John Keegan & the work that Cornwell lauds, Agincourt by Juliet Barker.
Enjoy!
Book Review: "Goose-Fledged Death"
Summary: 5 Stars
"Agincourt" is another lively but brutal lesson in English history, a primer in Medieval warfare and the campaigns and events that shaped what would eventually become the sprawling British Empire. As always, Cornwell spices his depiction of actual events with fictional characters - this time it's the 15th Century and the warrior king Henry V, told through the eyes of Nicholas Hook, an outlaw and archer in the King's army. The Hundred Year's War is coming to an end, chronicled here in the pious Henry's forays into France that would finally - if briefly - unite the two countries under English rule. Suffice to say, if we were taught history the way Bernard Cornwell writes it, we'd all be historians.
While Cornwell is admittedly not a scholar, he borrows heavily from scholarly works documenting the period, transforming academic text into swashbuckling human drama of love, greed, corruption, revenge and battlefield horror of unfathomable butchery - "...men of burning metal, phantoms from the dreams of hell, death coming through the dark to Soissons." But mostly "Agincourt" is homage to the humble English long bowman, a tribute to the yew bow and ash shaft and the men who trained a lifetime to develop the strength to send a bodkin-tipped arrow through an enemy's plate armor. Like the Battle of Crecy earlier in the Hundred Year's War (well told in Cornwell's highly recommended "The Archer" - the first and best of the "Grail" series), the English archer proved decisive in delivering battlefield victories over much larger and better equipped French legions. Beyond the tactics and strategies and decisions good and bad, Cornwell is at his best when describing the lives and deaths and fears and bloodlust of the men where the lines of battle become "a mess of torn metal and leather and muscle and guts." Through the mayhem, the author gently educates in topics as varied as 15th century Catholicism and the Lollards to the significance of heraldry and chivalry, while finding time to weave in the inevitable love story between the well-drawn Nicholas Hook and the fair Melisande, a French maiden and part time nun he rescues from slaughter during the horrific French army's rape their own town of Soissons.
In short, high drama and raucous history, an absolute must for the Cornwell fan and not a bad place to start for those who are not opposed to some well placed entertainment and carnage with their history.
Book Review: Agincourt
Summary: 5 Stars
There are few battles in the history of the world that are most remembered by name, even by those who know or recall little from their high school history classes. The Battle of Hastings is one; the Battle of Trafalgar is anther; the Battle of Thermopylae is perhaps another, known to a lesser extent. Then there is the Battle of Agincourt (or Azincourt, as it is known in French), which took place on October 25th, 1415. For many, William Shakespeare springs to mind with his immortal play, //Henry V//, and "we few, we happy few." Or perhaps the image of Kenneth Branagh making a memorable performance as the king who battled unbeatable odds. Ultimately its is the battle of the few triumphing over the many. And now Bernard Cornwell has finally written his take to put our questions and qualms to rest in his classic, skilful style. It was an stunning and in some ways incomprehensible victory of the British over the French in the midst of the Hundred Years War. And what was the key advantage? The British longbow. Cornwell has already explored the beauty and importance of this historical weapon in the //Grail Quest Series//, and returns with one of his strongest characters yet in Nicholas Hook. The name is real, taken from a list of archers of the time, along with most of the other characters in the book. But Cornwell is not simply spinning a great, adventurous yarn from a relatively unknown piece of history. The Hundred Years War, and in particular the Battle of Agincourt, is well documented. In //Agincourt//, we do not see the familiar heroes who defy the odds; many die, many suffer. It is a bloody, harsh reality, this war, that in some cases will leave the reader stunned with the graphic description. In Cornwell's best piece of writing to date, he doesn't hold back, giving many gritty details and revealing a tough and sad world. But ultimately we all know the British eventually triumphed; it makes for a much needed and happy conclusion to this ugly battle that left so many dead. //Agincourt// is a special book that deserves a place on any medieval historian's or medieval fan's shelf, as well as an important spot for any Cornwell fan. It is a book that will provide many answers, as well as both entertain and delight, and terrify and repulse. Cornwell tells it the way it really was: cold, exhausting, painful, and very bloody. To hear an exclusive interview with author Bernard Cornwell, go to [...]
Reviewed by Alex Telander
Book Review: A Long-awaited Tale!
Summary: 5 Stars
I looked forward quite eagerly to Cornwell's "Agincourt" after I first discovered that it was in the works - so much so that I purchased the hardback UK edition ("Azincourt") from Amazon-UK because it was published several months before the US edition was available. After the Grail Quest series, I wondered whether Mr Cornwell would ever take on the Agincourt story (and hoped that he would).
Despite the similarities in their names, there is no connection between Nicholas Hook, the protagonist of "Agincourt" and Thomas of Hookton, the archer hero of the Grail Quest books. In fact, there are (deliberate?) contrasts between the two men: Thomas was well-educated and relatively worldly, but wanted only to live the simple life of an English archer, leaving aside the mysticism of the Grail and the political complications of his Vexille ancestors and their Cathar connection, while Nicholas was a lowborn, uneducated young man whose visits to the cathedral in Soissons "...gave him an uneasy feeling that there must be more to life than a bow, an arrow, and the muscles to use them."
Cornwell's "Agincourt" is a very worthy fictional accompaniment to the factual story of Agincourt, a battle whose story is dear to the heart of all those who are fascinated by the history of the English warbow and the men who wielded that awesome weapon.
Slight spoiler below - proceed at your peril if you haven't read this book:
Particularly gratifying to me was the brief mention, in "Agincourt" of Thomas of Hookton "...who had died as lord of a thousand acres." Ties up that loose end for all of us who wondered how Thomas fared after the conclusion of the events recounted in the Grail Quest books.