However, absurdly disproportionate casualties do occur. When I read Shakespeare' sacciunt of the casualties at Agincourt (1415), I thought them just English propaganda: KING HENRY. Now, herald, are the dead numb'red?
HERALD. Here is the number of the slaught'red French.
[Gives a paper] . . . .
This note doth tell me of ten thousand French
That in the field lie slain; of princes in this number,
And nobles bearing banners, there lie dead
One hundred twenty-six; added to these,
Of knights, esquires, and gallant gentlemen,
Eight thousand and four hundred; of the which
Five hundred were but yesterday dubb'd knights.
So that, in these ten thousand they have lost,
There are but sixteen hundred mercenaries;
The rest are princes, barons, lords, knights, squires,
And gentlemen of blood and quality.
The names of those their nobles that lie dead:
Charles Delabreth, High Constable of France;
Jaques of Chatillon, Admiral of France;
The master of the cross-bows, Lord Rambures;
Great Master of France, the brave Sir Guichard Dolphin;
John Duke of Alencon; Antony Duke of Brabant,
The brother to the Duke of Burgundy;
And Edward Duke of Bar. Of lusty earls,
Grandpre and Roussi, Fauconbridge and Foix,
Beaumont and Marle, Vaudemont and Lestrake.
Here was a royal fellowship of death!
Where is the number of our English dead?
[HERALD presents another paper]
Edward the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk,
Sir Richard Kikely, Davy Gam, Esquire;
None else of name; and of all other men
But five and twenty. O God, thy arm was here!
And not to us, but to thy arm alone,
Ascribe we all. When, without stratagem,
But in plain shock and even play of battle,
Was ever known so great and little los
On one part and on th' other? Take it, God,
For it is none but thine.
EXETER. 'Tis wonderful!
And in fact it was exaggerated. But the French were slaughtered while the English got of fairly light. The constable of France, 12 other members of the highest nobility, some 1,500 knights, and about 4,500 men-at-arms were killed on the French side, while the English lost less than 450 men. The French force, which totaled 20,000 to 30,000 men, unwisely chose a battlefield with a narrow frontage of only about 1,000 yards of open ground between two woods. In this cramped space, which made large-scale maneuvers almost impossible, the French forfeited the advantage of their overwhelming numbers. The kill ratio, to use an ugly modern phrase, was about 14:1.
jks
John Mage <jmage at panix.com> wrote:The great Lucian wrote a scathing account of propaganda accounts of the Roman invasion of Mesopotamia of 165-166 "Pos dei istorian suggraphein" or "How to write History" - here he's dealing with one Athenian hack writer (at ¶20 - Kilburn trans vol VI of the Loeb Lucian at p.31: "[He] described incredible wounds and monstous deaths, how one man was wounded in the big toe and died on the spot, and how Perseus the general just gave a shout and twenty-seven of the enemy fell dead. And in the number slain he even contradicted the officers' despatches with his false figures: at Europus, he said, the enemy lost 70,236 killed, while the Romans lost just two and had nine wounded. I do not think anyone in his senses would accept that."
john mage
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