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Agincourt: Jenkin Lloyd, France 1415
Michael Cox
Historical Fiction (Series)
Ages 12 and up
Scholastic Children's Books UK, 2003, 0-439-98266-9
When Jenkin first learns that he is to go to war for King Henry V of England he is elated. Here at last is a chance for him to use the skills he has acquired after years of practicing at the archery butts. Here is his chance to honour his dead father, using the bow that his father left in his care. Surely the chance to prove himself lies at hand. And yet, in the back of his mind there is that niggling twinge of fear. After all, what if he should not return from this campaign in France?
Jenkin and his Welsh companions soon discover that war and battle have little to commend it. Acquiring honour, showing off your bravery, even proving your archery skills means very little when you are perpetually cold, wet, hungry, and in the grips of illness. For indeed, these are the conditions that Jenkin and his friends soon become all too familiar with. Though they are dreadful, what it perhaps even worse is the way in which lives are so casually lost. Disease and death during battle take the lives of Jenkin's fellow archers at a frightening rate. Jenkin wonders more than ever if he is going to survive this conflict, if he is ever going to see his village in Wales again.
Written with great power and an extraordinary understanding of the times and events that took place in them, the author goes a long way to show us how truly dreadful it must have been to be in France with King Henry V of England. He also shows us how much a hit and miss affair war was in those times, with armies marching across the countryside trying to dodge one another and lashing out in a seemingly random fashion. Finally he reveals the condition of the English as they walked this way and that and finally as they faced the French at Agincourt. Greatly outnumbered, starved, sick, dressed in rags and armed with rusty weapons, the English should have been soundly beaten. Indeed, they would have been had it not been for the skill and courage of the English archers.
It is hard to know if Jenkin would agree with the words spoken by Henry V in Shakespeare's play when the king says:
And gentlemen in England, now A-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd, they were not here;
And hold their manhoods cheap, while any speaks,
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
Perhaps Jenkin can feel proud that he played a part in bringing about a truly remarkable victory, a victory that would be remembered for hundreds of years into the future.
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