We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother... The reality was probably a little more prosaic. But whatever Henry may have lacked in Shakespearian eloquence, he more than made up for in raw courage.
The Breezer - the historical joyride for a curious mind: A weekly newsletter from Steve Winduss at the Batting the Breeze podcast. Spend a few minutes with me discovering historical snippets and fascinating facts related to the forthcoming week. Add to that occasional updates relating to the podcast, a touch of humour and a dash of "lots more".19th October 2025.
Happy Sunday! The English and the French have mastered the art of the love-hate relationship. Hardly surprising considering they’re only 21 miles apart - close enough to pop over for lunch but just far enough away to sustain a thousand years of mutually assured aggravation. These nations are like brothers, where familiarity can breed both affection and contempt in equal measure. Take my brother and I, for instance. When we were kids, we were either playing together enthusiastically or trying to kill each other. Big bruv followed the Queensbury Rules. I preferred the anything-goes approach. During one of our more heated bouts, he hurled a dart at me. It was a lousy throw, sailing a good 18 inches wide. Ignoring the fact that this was probably intentional and with the lightning-quick cunning of a devious little sod, I thrust my right foot sideways to intercept it. Bullseye. The dart embedded itself perfectly between foot and ankle. The projectile held on just long enough for me to run to mum, tears streaming, with the damning evidence of big bruv’s cruelty. Look! Despite him receiving the full force of Mum’s fury, my brother and I were best mates again within 24 hours. (We’re still close today by the way, not a dart in sight).
And that's how it has been between the English and the French. War and peace. Peace and War. England and France were frequently at loggerheads from William the Conqueror’s invasion in 1066 through to the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
The English and French were irrevocably connected in 1994 with the opening of the Channel Tunnel. This image shows a view overlooking the tunnel entrance at Folkestone, leading to Coquelles, near Calais. The tunnel is 31 miles long, of which 23 miles runs underwater beneath the English Channel, making it the longest undersea section of any tunnel in the world.
The wars in between these battles blur into an unbroken chain of mutual antagonism, remembered today only by die-hard historians. Of course, there are certain confrontations that will never be forgotten; Crécy (1346), Poitiers (1356), Blenheim (1704), Trafalgar (1805).
Out of Curiosity
Did you see what I did there, that typical British reflex of listing only the battles we won? Apparently the French won a few battles too. Their names would probably roll off a Gallic tongue with ease; Bouvines (1214), Castillon (1453), Fontenoy (1745). And then there was Yorktown (1781), technically an American victory during the War of Independence (Revolutionary War), but remembered by the French as 'the French victory at Yorktown', the one that brought the British to their knees.
However, there is one battle whose name rings louder than all the rest in British circles, particularly when politicians needs to conjure the spirit of past glories to dig themselves out of a hole. Agincourt, 1415. A bedraggled English army stared down the face of almost certain annihilation in an anonymous muddy field somewhere in northern France. Outnumbered, exhausted, riddled with dysentery and far from home, the men’s chances of survival ranged from grim to none. The French held most of the cards… except one; The English were led by King Henry V.
Henry of Monmouth was only 29 years old in 1415. His father, Henry IV, had been tough, but Henry was tougher. At the age of 16 he had taken an arrow in the face which lodged six inches deep and just missed his spine. His surgeon constructed a special tool to extract the arrow from Henry’s head… while he was conscious. Henry of Monmouth became Henry V in 1413, aged 26, when his father died in Westminster Abbey’s Jerusalem Chamber. (Note: A prophecy had warned Henry IV that he would die in Jerusalem - probably not quite what he expected.) The Kingdom of England was in a mess. She was nearly bankrupt, her nobles were agitated and morale was low, as were their coffers. By contrast, the French King, Charles VI, despite his moniker 'Charles the Mad', was ruling over Europe’s dominant power. When a nation is looking for solutions and none are forthcoming, it’s time for a war. In matters of war, Henry V was a master. His planning was meticulous, his adaptability during battle unrivalled and his iron discipline over his men absolute. And he was ruthless.
16th century portrait of Henry V, on display at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
In August 1415, Henry had travelled with a 12,000 strong army to capture Harfleur. This was a port on the northern coast of France which would complement the English stronghold of Calais, 125 miles northwest. Henry held a threadbare claim to the French throne through his great-great-grandmother Isabella, mother to Edward III and daughter of King Philip IV of France. It was time to press for his inheritance, no matter how tenuous. Victory was his, but the cost was high. Nearly half of Henry’s men perished, most victims of dysentery rather than French steel. Nonetheless, feeling bullish after Harfleur, Henry marched 150 miles across France towards Calais in a show of strength. The victory parade nearly turned into a death march. The French had forced Henry south of Calais and cornered his army near the village of Agincourt. The eight-day march had taken three weeks. Henry’s army was starving, filthy and decimated by disease. The night they arrived at Agincourt, the English huddled in a muddy field, while the French rested in relative comfort. As dawn broke, 610 years ago this coming Saturday, 25 October 1415, the impending battlefield was revealed. Oak trees hemmed in a narrow strip of land on both sides. Days of torrential rain had turned the recently-ploughed field into a quagmire. Between the two armies lay a churned wasteland of thick, sticky mud.
A schematic showing the battle positions at the start of the Battle of Agincourt.
Henry’s wretched men fell into line. The men-at-arms took centre-stage, on foot rather than mounted, while the archers took up the flanks, their sharpened stakes plunged into the mud at an angle to hamper the impending charge. The advanced and rear guards lined the flanks. The massive French contingent formed three divisions, one behind the other, 12,000 men in all. This would be revenge for humiliation at Crécy and Poitiers. This was their moment. Or was it? For three long hours the opposing forces eyeballed each other across the sodden ground. The English king had delivered his final words to his men. One hundred and eighty-five years later, Shakespeare would attribute one of history’s great wartime speeches to Henry…
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother.
The reality was probably a little more prosaic. But whatever Henry may have lacked in Shakespearian eloquence, he more than made up for in raw courage. He would lead his men from the front. They would fight together, they would die together.
“The Morning of the Battle of Agincourt”; painting by Sir John Gilbert, 1884. The scene captures the English army gathered in the pre-dawn atmosphere on 25 October 1415. Henry V is most likely the figure wearing the prominent red tabard emblazoned with yellow chevrons. Behind them, Henry’s army spreads across the muddy landscape under a stormy sky.
At 11 a.m., Henry ordered an advance to within 300 yards of the French. The English then regrouped, reset their stakes and waited. At last, the adrenaline-fuelled French cavalry charged. Their horses burst forward like racehorses from the gate. But within moments, the same horses were sinking into the mud, hardly able to move. Having covered only fifty yards, they were stranded. Five thousand English archers raised their longbows. 60,000 arrows a minute rained down on the floundering French. Horses threw off their riders and bolted back towards their own line. The French men-at-arms attempted to advance through the mud as arrows penetrated gaps in their 60-pound steel plate armour. Some died from direct hits, others stumbled and drowned, unable to pull themselves up from the mud. By the time those that were left reached the English lines, they were exhausted. The reinvigorated English feasted on their prey. The dismounted English men-at-arms, nimble in their light armoured suits, waded in. Archers downed their longbows and took up mallets, axes and daggers to join in the slaughter.
Depiction of King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt: The King wears on this surcoat the Royal Arms of England, quartered with the Fleur de Lys of France as a symbol of his claim to the throne of France.
The rule book of chivalric medieval fighting had been thrown away. French aristocrats expecting to fight their equals were pulled to the ground by English peasants and clubbed to death. The second French division only added to the crush and were similarly massacred. The pragmatic third division turned and fled. Within just two hours, 10,000 French soldiers, knights, dukes and counts were dead. The English had lost barely 400 men. The Battle of Agincourt was won.
Out of Curiosity
Five years after victory at the Battle of Agincourt, Henry V was pronounced heir to the French crown through the Treaty of Troyes (1420). As part of the treaty, he married Catherine of Valois, the daughter of Charles the Mad. The treaty also disinherited Charles’ son (the Dauphin) in deference to Henry, which must have made for quite an awkward family dynamic. However, Henry would never wear the crown. He died after contracting dysentery on campaign near Paris just two months before Charles himself passed away. Henry was 35 years old.
After 750 years of conflict, The Battle of Waterloo (1815) seemed to quell the fire of Anglo-French rivalry. Perhaps the French were as tired of Napoleon Boneparte as the British. Once the French emperor was bundled off to the remote island of St Helena, there didn’t seem much point in fighting any more. An informal peace had descended on the two nations. France recognised British global colonial aspirations and the British were comfortable with France’s domination of Europe. Wars are so expensive after all.
Dates with History
Tuesday... Excuse me continuing the theme of French-English battles for just a moment longer… …but 220 years ago this Tuesday, 21 October 1805, Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson stood on the deck of the HMS Victory off Cape Trafalgar near the southern tip of Spain, preparing to engage with the Franco-Spanish fleet. Defeat could threaten Britain’s very survival. The Battle of Trafalgar would be brutal. Nelson deployed his unconventional tactic of sailing perpendicular to the enemy and attacking in two columns.
The Battle of Trafalgar, painted by Clarkson Frederick Stanfield, 1836.
Divided and confused, the Franco-Spanish fleet were disorientated. Within five hours, twenty-two enemy ships were either captured or destroyed. Not a single British vessel was lost. However, during the afternoon, Horatio Nelson was felled by a French marksman’s musket ball. As he lay dying below deck, news reached the vice-admiral of the British victory. Nelson died uttering the words…
Kiss me, Hardy. Now I am satisfied. Thank God I have done my duty.
Out of Curiosity
Lord Nelson’s body was preserved for the journey home in a barrel filled with French and Spanish brandy - the spoils of victory. During the trip home, sailors would secretly - knowingly or otherwise - syphon off the brandy from the barrel in which Nelson was slowly pickling. This practice was known as “tapping the admiral”, meaning to 'illicitly drink spirits’.
Friday...
László Bíró was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1899. Bíró pursued a career in journalism. The tool of his trade at the time, the fountain pen, had existed since 953 CE while the first patents were granted in 1809. John J. Loud invented and patented a ‘ballpoint’ pen in 1888. This provided a different method of releasing ink out of the pen. A tiny rotating metal ball was fitted in the tip of the pen. As it rolled, ink was steadily delivered. Loud’s pen suffered from ink leakage and smudging, not helped by the slow drying time. The venture wasn’t a commercial success and the patent eventually lapsed.
László Bíró, c1950s.
One day while in the press room, László observed how quickly the ink dried during newspaper printing and set about replicating this feature in a pen. Bíró solved the riddle of how to encourage ink to flow smoothly out out a pen without smudging. His pen received its first patent in June 1938 and became a great success. Soon afterwards, World War II broke out, forcing the Jewish Bíró and his brother to flee the Nazis. They arrived in Argentina in 1943, where they remained for the rest of their life. In 1945, László sold his pen patent to Marcel Bich, the French industrialist. Seven years later in 1953, Marcel’s company changed its name to Société Bic. The Bic biro has become one of the world’s must-have writing tools, selling over 100 billion units to date. László Bíró died 40 years ago this Friday, 24 October 1985.
Out of Curiosity
Marcel Bich marketed his biros under the brand name Bic, having dropped the final ‘h’ from his surname. He was aware that, in English-speaking countries, the word ‘Bich’ could be confused with the derogatory use of the word ‘bitch’.
A Tale of Two Buses
Jackie Robinson is widely remembered in America as having broken ‘the colour barrier’. Against all odds, he became the first African American to play Major League Baseball and fulfil a stellar career with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson’s story perhaps started in 1944 while stationed at Camp Hood, Texas. Like many other young men at the time, he had been drafted into the U.S. Army soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941. In Texas, Jim Crow Laws - legal racial segregation - were still in force. One day in July 1944, Robinson boarded a military bus and took his seat near the front. Despite exemption from Jim Crow on military buses, the driver ordered Jackie to move to the back. Robinson refused. The bus driver unleashed some unwarranted racial abuse, but Jackie remained calm. His reward… arrest by the military police and court-martial. Jackie was acquitted of all charges but the vindication was cold comfort. He had lost confidence in an army that could subject him to such racial injustice. With his superiors keen to deflect any criticism of racial prejudice, a compromise was reached. Jackie received an honourable discharge from the army - 'by reason of physical disqualification'. The army’s loss proved to be baseball’s gain. Robinson broke the colour barrier in 1947, was awarded Rookie of the Year and MVP (Most Valuable Player) with the Brooklyn Dodgers. In addition, he won a World Series and was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.
Jackie Robinson swinging for the Brooklyn Dodgers, 1954.
The man who was discharged from the army by reason of physical disqualification had proved himself one of baseball’s finest players, achieved while performing under extreme pressure. Jackie Robinson went on to become a high-profile voice in civil rights advocacy. For his contribution, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan in 1984 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2003 by George W. Bush, the two highest civilian honours in the United States.
Rosa Louise McCauley was born in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1913. As an African American, she was regularly subject to racial discrimination and segregation. By the time Jackie Robinson was being arrested at Camp Hood in 1944, Rosa had been married to Raymond Parks for 12 years. During that period she had become involved with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Roll forward to December 1955: Rosa Parks was now a seamstress at the Montgomery Fair department store in Montgomery, Alabama. One evening, Rosa was heading home after a long day’s work. She boarded her usual bus in Cleveland Avenue and paid the fare. She sat down in the coloured section, one row back from seats reserved for white passengers. As the bus took on more passengers, the reserved area reached capacity - white passengers were now standing in the aisle. The driver halted the bus, climbed into the passenger area and shifted the segregation zone sign back one row. Without moving, Rosa was now seated in the white-designated area. The bus driver asked Parks to give up her seat. As with Jackie Robinson eleven years earlier, she refused. The bus remained stationary until the police arrived a short while later to arrest Rosa.
Rosa Parks being fingerprinted on February 22, 1956, by Lieutenant D.H. Lackey as one of the people indicted as leaders of the Montgomery bus boycott.
Parks was released on bail within a few hours. Nonetheless, her employers wasted no time in dismissing her. The ensuing Montgomery bus boycott lasted for 381 days. African Americans accounted for 75% of the Montgomery Bus Company’s passenger base. The boycott was a financial disaster. With a strong whiff of irony, the bus company itself lobbied the city to reform the very segregation laws its driver had enforced the previous year. In November 1956, the US Supreme Court upheld a ruling that segregation on public transport was unconstitutional. The Montgomery bus boycott was over. Rosa Parks is remembered as the Mother of the US Civil Rights Movement. Just like Jackie Robinson, Rosa was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Gold Medal. Unlike him, she received them during her lifetime.
Rosa Parks died of natural causes 20 years ago this Thursday, 24 October 2005, at the age of 92. With glorious symmetry, she had died on the 33rd anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s death, 24 October 1972. He was 53 years old.
Talk to me...
I receive some wonderful feedback from readers who add colour to the historical snippets that I publish. If you have any thoughts to add to some of today’s topics, or from previous weeks, I’d love to hear from you. Drop me an email at steve@battingthebreeze.com.
Question of the Week
He was born in the early 1340s. The origin of Valentine’s Day is attributed to him. He became a writer while holding down a job as a customs officer. He was the first to be interred in Westminster Abbey in the area known today as Poet’s Corner. He is remembered for writing about bare bottoms, hot pokers, adultery, sexual prowess and misogyny while convincing everyone his work was respectable literature. He was a friend of John of Gaunt, grandfather to King Henry V. His book, The Canterbury Tales, was banned in the United States in 1873 for its obscene material. Who was he?
And Finally…
Aptronym of the week
Aptronym noun A person’s name that matches their job or one of their main characteristics. CAMBRIDGE DICTIONARY
He was born in 1895 in Reading, England. He studied history at Oxford University before World War I and returned to Oxford in 1922 to study medicine. His first work published in 1933, ‘Diseases of the Nervous System’, became Britain’s standard neurological reference work for decades. Among many positions, he served as President of the Royal College of Physicians from 1950 to 1957. He died in 1966, aged 71. This Thursday marks the 130th birthday, 23 October 1895, of the eminent British neurologist - Walter Russell Brain.
Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer was an extraordinary character, a poet who made the English language respectable. He died 625 years ago on Saturday, 25 October 1400. In the 14th century, ‘English’ literature was dominated by French and Latin. The English aristocracy still mainly spoke French as they had done since the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Chaucer made the bold decision to write in Middle English, a rough vernacular spoken by common people of the time. The language was considered vulgar, as was a significant amount of his content. He was versatile, as comfortable writing about spiritual devotion as he was crafting lewd, bottom-based humour. Chaucer’s writing profoundly influenced the course of English literature. He is credited with at least 2,000 words in today’s English vocabulary, while Valentine’s Day was first associated with romantic love in his book, ‘Parlement of Foules’. But perhaps Chaucer’s greatest legacy has been to condemn generations of English school kids to spend hours deciphering pages of incomprehensible medieval hieroglyphics for no apparent reason. Not bad for a customs officer.
If you fancy some light reading, try this: an extract from William Caxton's edition of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 1477.
ATTRIBUTIONS
László Bíró: here, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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