Why read a new, 400-page biography of England’s King Henry V? Because, writes the best-selling historian and television journalist Dan Jones, while Henry ruled for less than a decade, “his reign is a case study in the art of leadership in a time of crisis, which feels especially apposite as I write these words today.”
The young king who led the ragged troops that won the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 has been held up repeatedly as an inspiring model. Most famously, in his history play “Henry V” (1599), Shakespeare showed him transformed from the roistering, tavern-loving Prince Hal into the embodiment of martial heroism. The words he gave to his king on the eve of battle — “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers” — have remained over the centuries the supreme expression of heroic leadership.
In 1944, Laurence Olivier spoke these very words in a famous film version of Shakespeare’s play dedicated to the “Commandos and Airborne Troops of Britain.” It was as if through Shakespeare’s magic the victor of Agincourt could be conjured up to accompany to Normandy the soldiers who were risking their lives to liberate Europe.
In his own efforts to conjure a flesh-and-blood Henry V, Jones writes in the present tense: His Henry “runs,” “rides,” “tries to decide” and “feels in his heart.” Though the historian does not have the resources of the stage, he manages to transform the mass of archival traces — many of them as unpromising as requests to Parliament for tax increases — into a convincing portrait of an actual human being.
Along the way, with a novelist’s flair, Jones brings an array of others to life, from the Welsh guerrilla leader Owain Glyndwr to the renegade knight Harry Hotspur to the religious dissident John Oldcastle. Shakespeare enthusiasts will recognize many of these as the historical figures out of whom the playwright constructed some of his most unforgettable characters. (Shakespeare originally called the prince’s disreputable fat companion Oldcastle but, under pressure from the powerful Oldcastle family, changed the name to Falstaff.)
For Jones the key to understanding the king’s character lies in his turbulent, dangerous apprenticeship as heir to the throne. When he was 13, his father usurped the crown, killing the reigning king, Richard II. In the years that followed, the regime lurched from one crisis to another. The young prince had no leisure to sow the wild oats that Shakespeare attributed to him. Barely past puberty, he was forced to buckle on armor and fight for his father’s tottering throne and for his own survival. At the battle of Shrewsbury, when he was 16, he took an arrow in the face that almost killed him.
Henry learned early to be wary not only of the regime’s mortal enemies but also of his friends, his brothers, his father. Fashioning a public persona, complete with a theatrical show of piety as well as toughness, Henry formulated an aggressive foreign policy of his own, distinct from that of the regime. From his unsteady perch on the throne, his father regarded him with increasing uneasiness.
That uneasiness finally spilled over into hostility, triggering rumors of an impending coup. Henry marched on London with armed supporters, but in a private meeting at Westminster Palace, according to one account, he fell to his knees and, holding out a dagger, told his father to kill him on the spot if he doubted his loyalty. The two embraced, and the crisis was resolved. Less than a year later, the father was dead, and the prince ascended the throne as Henry V.
These events occupy the first half of Jones’s book. The second chronicles the events of Henry’s brief but celebrated reign, centering on his decision to assert sovereignty over the kingdom of France and to make good on his claim by force of arms. The invasion force of 12,000 soldiers that he assembled and led in August 1415 was utterly inadequate for the goal of national conquest, even against a country hobbled by internal division and ruled by a king prone to bouts of madness.
Henry managed to capture the port of Harfleur and bring devastation to several other fortified cities in Normandy. But as the fall drew on and as warfare and disease took their toll on his fighting force, reducing it by close to half, Henry knew that he had waited dangerously long to attempt the long trek to English-controlled Calais, where ships could take them back across the Channel.
On the morning of Oct. 25, near the village of Agincourt, the escape route of the bedraggled English forces was blocked by a numerically superior and better-equipped French Army. The battle that ensued ended in one of the most famous upsets in military history. The French cavalry attacking the English troops became bogged down in the rain-soaked plowlands and were easy targets for the longbowmen whom Henry had stationed to the sides of the battlefield. Men and horses piled in hideous, blood-soaked mass. The commander of the French forces, Constable Charles d’Albret, was killed, and the English took several thousand prisoners.
It was customary in medieval warfare to hold the wealthier prisoners for ransom and to disarm and, after a suitable negotiation, release the rest. In the wake of the English victory, a handful of the most valuable aristocratic captives were duly identified and led off. But whether because he was afraid that the battle was not quite over or because he was angry that the English baggage stored at the rear of the lines had been robbed or simply because he wanted to terrify his enemies, Henry ordered that all the rest of the prisoners be killed immediately. It is a sign of how unusual the order was that many of the English band of brothers refused to carry it out. Henry had to organize a death squad to do the job.
Here at this moment of his subject’s highest heroism, and not only here, Jones knows he has a problem: Henry V, his book’s “case study in the art of leadership,” was a monster.
To his credit, Jones does not back away. His narrative of Henry’s life is a chronicle of coldhearted decisions, of sieges and massacres, of close friends executed for their real or perceived disloyalty, of heretics burned at the stake, of a damaged soul incapable of gentleness or love. This was Shakespeare’s problem as well, and it is an artistic miracle that the playwright managed to acknowledge much of what was truly awful about Henry without alienating the audience from him. Instead, his play brings the audience ever closer to what was transpiring inside the lonely young king.
As a historian, Jones cannot make up soliloquies for his flawed hero. What he does instead is to appeal to the judgment of Henry’s contemporaries. We may think he was a monster, but they regarded him as “a man whom they could trust with their money, their faith and their lives.” Whether the trust was repaid is another matter. Only a few years after Henry’s great victory, he died at the age of 35, leaving an infant son as his successor.
The territory in France was soon lost. All the gains and the glory, for which so much blood and treasure were expended, vanished like mist in the sun.
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