Yesterday, October 25, was the six hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Agincourt. Nobody would remember that battle if it hadn’t been for Shakespeare’s Henry V, and the 1944 movie with young Laurence Olivier with those images of great flights of arrows soaring into the French ranks.
War is not what it used to be. Courage has not vanished, but chivalry certainly has, and with it rhetoric. Rhetoric is or was the art of persuading people, through great eloquence, to do things that they would obviously be crazy to do, like facing ten thousand heavily armed French soldiers. We don’t know what King Henry V actually said, but Shakespeare gave him a splendidly rousing speech to the English troops, the main point of which was that this battle would be an opportunity for eternal glory as part of a band of brothers, rather than just an excellent opportunity for getting killed.
In the grand peroration of his speech the king tells his men that:
“Gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.”
That’s rhetoric, although like most rhetoric it is not to be believed for a moment. Today’s wars are justified by a miserable, shuffling political language designed to placate the voters rather than to inspire the troops. We hear nothing about courage or glory, but a great deal about security, insurgency, protective reaction, national sovereignty, and spheres of influence. It’s not exactly Shakespearean, and no more believable than Henry V’s famous speech. In war truth is proverbially the first casualty, but now we don’t even have the elegance of language to describe it.
In modern warfare we rarely see decisive victories like Agincourt, although it scarcely ended the war between England and France which lasted for a hundred years. However we have made great progress in the arts of war. Nobody even thinks of using bows and arrows any more, now that we have much more sophisticated toys. In other ways perhaps we have not come so far. The Battle of Agincourt was held on Saint Crispin’s Day, which was considered to be highly auspicious. The soldiers and indeed the kings of the fifteen century were extremely superstitious. They believed in the intervention of saints, spells, omens, magic, ghosts, evil spirits, and even in witches, wizards, and sorcerers – shockingly pagan stuff in a Christian country. These were not called the dark ages for nothing.
So we share something with those brave and deluded soldiers of six hundred years ago. One week after Saint Crispin’s Day we celebrate All Hallow’s Eve, The eve of witches. At this darkening time of year we come closer in spirit to our ancient and deplorably violent ancestors. They speak to us with their tales of vampires and werewolves, hobgoblins and bad fairies, unquiet spirits and tormenting demons that still haunt our dreams and provide the imagery for some of our most popular movies. Bows and arrows are definitely out of style but, this week at least, the dark side is definitely in.
Copyright: David Bouchier.
