Digging Up The Battle Of Agincourt's Lost Dead | Medieval Dead | Unearthed History

Archaeologist Tim Sutherland unearths some fascinating clues as he digs up burial sites from the Battle of Agincourt.
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[@oh8wingman]

A couple of things have been over looked here. Though it is estimated that the English embarked with 10 to 12 thousand me there is no mention of the siege to the city of Harfleur. The city was placed under siege for around 6 weeks and during that time it is estimated that the English force lost 20 to 30 percent of their force due to starvation and pestilence. Another thing which was not mentioned was the description of the battlefield itself. The English were backed by a woodland and they faced a freshly ploughed field that had been turned into a quagmire from days of rain. When the French advanced the cavalry was forced to dismount due to the mud which horses apparently did poorly in. The French had to slog over the field towards the English which gave the English a fair amount of time to use their arrows before actually coming into physical contact with the enemy. Knights and aristocracy did very poorly in the mud as they exhausted themselves fighting the mud while wearing 80 to 120 pounds of armour. Infantry wearing chain mail were also adversely affected by the mud and expended much of their energy so that when the two sides merged in battle the French were at a distinct disadvantage fighting against lightly armoured and fresher men. It has been noted in some accounts that many of the armoured French died from asphyxiation when they fell face first into the mud and could not get back up so following troops pushed them down even further. One thing that favoured the English was the use of the longbow versus the crossbow. The long bow tends to have a greater range than the crossbow so the French would have been under fire for a longer period of time before the crossbows came into range. Another problem with the crossbow is, although it may be more accurate, it is slow to load. An average archer with a long bow can loose 5 to 7 arrows (good archers 10 - 12) a minute while a crossbow is limited to 2 to 3 bolts in the same time. Crossbows were greater for taking down heavily armoured men on horseback because they could fire a heavier projectile more accurately than a long bow but they were at a disadvantage when facing massed infantry where quick blanket fire is far more effective. For comparison a 150 lb longbow will cast a 1,350 grain arrow a little faster and farther than a 1200 lb steel crossbow will a 1,350 grain bolt. About 235 yds for the bolt, about 250 yds for the arrow. About 30 arrows in 5 minutes for the longbow, about 10 bolts in 5 minutes for the crossbow. Source: www.google.com/search?q=medival+crossbow+range+versus+longbow&rlz=1C1PRFI_enCA895CA897&oq=medival+crossbow+range+versus+longbow&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIJCAEQIRgKGKABMgkIAhAhGAoYoAHSAQkxMjAzN2owajeoAgCwAgA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

[@BenSHammonds]

enjoyed the program, Tims work at Towton has been a favorite subject and now here at Agincourt as well, good stuff

[@comfortablynumb9342]

Imagine the stuff that old storage and trading place had in it before it burned. There were probably a lot of priceless historical items there.

[@GavTatu]

like our own little library of alexandria.

[@comfortablynumb9342]

@@GavTatu probably

[@richardrichards5982]

Likely that your field was not the actual battlefield. It is hard to have a battle of that size and not have artefacts somewhere, even if the area has been ploughed for 600 years. There were a smattering of WWI and WWII artefacts for example. DId you try ground penetrating radar? (expensive I know, especially if it is the wrong place). Anyway, thanks for trying, it would be great to find that battlefield.

[@marypatten9655]

Was a little disapointed we did not see any actual digging or searching with of the ground surface with radar. Thank you fir sharing God bless

[@minirock000]

May godbeless

[@TheEvertw]

While it may have happened that some knights of old were buried in their armour, that armour would most likely have been removed, being quite valuable. Most likely, the battlefield was cleared of most valuables, the nobles returned to their families, the commoners buried in a common grave after being relieved of their earthly possessions. Then those fields would have been searched carefully by the locals for any remaining valuables.

[@pilsplease7561]

Actually that usually didnt happen very rarely was it looted.

[@albertenriquecrowleybeastc217]

How long did the bodies lay out there and putrefy?

[@Rusty_Gold85]

I reckon they massed burnt the bodies in the days after, by locals and Churchmen as they started to rot

[@richardbowers3647]

Great innuendo history!!!

[@ronaldmessina4229]

In my humble opinion 😢the battle of Agincourt was a very bad/terrible situation for the poor FRENCH, because the inglish had “longbows “ and they utilized them to their own advantage, whilst the FRENCH were all dressed in heavy armour , mounted on horseback, and thus unable to move themselves,nor the poor horses 🐎 who were being killed by the dang inglish, thus the defeat of the FRENCH 😢😢

[@fabiodeoliveiraribeiro1602]

We know that the Romans returned to the forest in Germania where they were defeated by the barbarians led by Arminius and buried the soldiers' skeletons. The site of the mass grave was recently discovered and excavated. So, what is most surprising is the apparent lack of interest on the part of the French. Didn't they return to the site of the battle of Agincourt to give the defeated soldiers a decent burial? Are there no historical records of something similar in France?

[@comfortablynumb9342]

I don't understand what is wrong with the burial they got. They're in the ground. They probably don't care about a headstone at this point.

[@fabiodeoliveiraribeiro1602]

@@comfortablynumb9342 You will understand something one day, maybe.

[@comfortablynumb9342]

@@fabiodeoliveiraribeiro1602 they're dead and buried. Apparently in a big box. They have a grave. A marker would be okay but I don't think digging them up will help them at all. In my mind it's far more respectful to leave them in peace.

[@fabiodeoliveiraribeiro1602]

@@stayhungry1503 Couldn't the French have returned to the site 10 or 20 years later?

[@kadoj]

Well…there’s no “returning” to be done, really. Azincourt is _in_ france already. The inhabitants of that village are French, the farmers who work the fields there are French. No need to return when you never left the site at all in the first place.

[@MrGozer23]

I think that the French dead were nobility, or at least the cavalry were. Point being that any noble who could be identified was buried in their family mausoleums. Meaning any dead left would mostly be soldiers with average armour, if any, As well as more average weapons if any survived. Some armour and weapons would have become trophies, too.

[@GailBrenner-vt9ou]

Gee...aren't you a n excited word filler inner. ❤

[@maeve4686]

It was said during his explanation of the battle that most of the nobility didn't find the initial calvary charge worth it and instead chose to remain with the infantry and to support them. Also, they thought that taking off their gauntlet would give them protection. Oops... I loved this documentary. Too sadly, some are excited by finds of a dig. I'm sure it was difficult to get permission. With the paperwork they perused in the archives, the French had a different outlook on the attempt by the English Battle of Waterloo Colonel who did find a burial site and the French then created their own narrative of the facts. It's always difficult to recognize errors , correct the story and apologize. 200 years of misinformation.

[@sheilahallett2450]

Interesting

[@giannapple]

Why in these type of documentary the music is always SO loud?? Maybe because the spoken part is considered irrelevant so it doesn’t matter if we can’t understand what tyey say?

[@craftygnome97]

Really annoying, especially when you watch these to fall asleep

[@maeve4686]

I love archaeological programs and this one is exceptional. Those who said they learnt nothing is truly abhorrent. I learnt ancient medieval history of the 100 years war, how nobility in France may have thought it a great adventure & that they could take a gauntlet off & be let go, not knowing it would be 100 years before their lineage recovered if at all, that armies then were made up of mostly common folk fighting for their own country on native soil, battle tactics, types of weapons & protection, political upheaval that the cause for the start of the 100 Years War had been forgotten with legend replacing facts . How someone can say this was a waste of time truly isn't intelligent, apparently unable to being mindful of anything but skeletons & finds. SMH.

[@Heisrisin3]

So I essentially just watched 50 minutes of his story and looking for something that they didn’t find. That’s 50 minutes I’ll never get back.

[@redtobertshateshandles]

At least it was free. Chalk up another boring British TV show.

[@notsure1198]

Did you learn anything new or appreciate any of the artful film making or photography? If not, then it really is your loss.

[@centsofhumor]

The time that you lost is now history.

[@StRaphael-we9qn]

Hi there, I hope that you learnt some good history 😊

[@StRaphael-we9qn]

Hey there, time we'll invested. Always a mysterious conclusion 😮

[@steveh7823]

Battle fields were picked clean by local people as soon as the armies left. Relatives would come to recover remains. Even the teeth of the dead were removed and sold to make dentures. Most of the unclaimed bodies would be fallen mercenaries and even these may have been taken by battle field pickers, but nothing of value would be left behind or buried. There must still be trophy weapons taken back to England from Agincourt in private collections which would show military or feudal marks.

[@1339LARS]

LARS Top notch!!!!!!

[@nigelmccomb8106]

As someone who has read about Agincourt I didn’t learn much from this.

[@MikeD56034]

gotta love how deadly arrows were in those times, but when you adapt that to video games its often an embarrassing joke xD

[@ronaldmessina4229]

Also the inglish held up ⬆️ their two fingers that were utilized to draw up ⬆️ the longbow in a mocking gesture against the FRENCH who could do nothing about the situation 😢

[@NewEngland462]

Good morning old boy. Yes we are looking for dead frogs of the older type. Have you seen them old chap lol

[@schristi69]

Thats 46 minutes I will never get back.

[@bougeac]

Weapons, armour, clothing and anything of use would have been quickly stripped from the bodies of the dead. Even broken weapons and arrows etc. about the only time significant armour has been found was the battle of wisby dig in Gotland. Unusually, many bodies were buried still wearing their armour. This was due to the bloated putrefying states of the corpses as a result of the extreme summer heat the battle was fought in. No one understandably wanted to go near them!

[@peterlynchchannel]

14:30 Actually, a lot of nobility died in all major battles of the period. Not twenty years earlier the French nobility had suffered a similar wipe out at Nicopolis. The French nobility lived to fight, they didn't put commoners in the front lines.

[@will-i-am-not]

As far as I was aware not many dogs have been allowed, and hardly anything has been found, as no one is really sure exactly where the main battle took place

[@gobanito]

2:54: Agincourt didn't "turn the tide" of the Hundred Years War against France since England lost the war.

[@afellowamericanafellowamer5317]

How do you feed an army that big every day?

[@urbaneplanner]

For those wondering, this video doesn’t actually involve any excavation of the dead from agincourt. This isn’t that surprising - I don’t believe graves from many medieval battles have been found, although there is the odd exception

[@3mate1]

This is a good example of salvaging a documentary, they didn't find anything whatsoever. So they padded the hour long show with maps and forgot to change the title.

[@frankfischer1281]

Ah, the difficult lives of archeologists!

[@user-rm4rn1sf4g]

Why haven't they used lidsr to search the fields?

[@lindachandler2293]

Interesting as stuff like this is. I don't want my remains to be dug up and poked through! It feels very disrespectful, not to mention we now know viruses that haven't been around for goodness knows how long are being revived, too!

[@johnholmes6897]

If you have records from the churches, they will have decent records of who were in their congregation then who wasn't there right after the battle. If you dont have their names on the roll call they might be the archers

[@charlesdavis9937]

Is there a battle roll for who fought in Agincourt? I have an ancestor family that lived in England from 1066 to about the 1670s.

[@0371998]

First of all, I appreciate very much your channel, and the passion involved into this. The Big cash, and the experimented Orators are well seen. Premièrement et par-dessus tout, J'apprécis vraiment beaucoup votre canal et les passions intelligentes impliqués dans cela. De gros investissements financiers et des orateurs expérimentés sont bien vus.

[@ronaldmessina4229]

Anglosajón anglosajón anglosajón, pero qué siempre pasa con el FRANCÉS? El FRANCÉS es utilised en tout le monde como el idioma dipomatique , así como Ud debe de saber esto, maintaint 😮

[@fiddleback1568]

I doubt much of the armor was buried. Most likely, it was looted.

[@johnholmes6897]

Nothing dug, nothing really learned. Same mystery.

[@charlesfaure1189]

A good many of the skeletonized dead from such battlefields were eventually dug up and ground up for use as fertilizer. It was a going industry for a good while.

[@AnExtrovertPaints]

Wrong era; you're thinking of the Napoleonic period.

[@jacmaclar]

Good video, but turn off the goofy music. It’s so bloody melodramatic.

[@makita883]

They dug up nothing in this video…!!

[@xtimberjackx]

60 000 knight and man at arms... please sir calm the fuck down

[@reddrockingeezer]

I consider this title as clickbait. I kept waiting for an archeological dig that would show cut bones, smashed skulls, or something of interest. Sorry, but this is disappointing to say the least.

[@michaelthompson342]

Agree

[@brianford8493]

They are fertilizer mate

[@marvwatkins7029]

Disappointing to say the least.

[@user-jz6nn6hl3u]

im english but battle of agincourt is a victory but.....we lost the hundred years war the british historians never give this site of the french history all we hear is sluys, crecy, agincourt. victories but the french were fielding bigger armies and resources england had problems all the time in scotland and wales

[@jimpinetree2531]

Being a historical documentary, the re-enactment was terribly inaccurate… Fleur de lis banner was seen flying everywhere, but in reality, Oriflame banner should have been the French emblem… Fleur de lis banner was only first used by Joan d’arc 14 years later…

[@stayhungry1503]

very odd with a film about agincourt yet they dont interview a single frenchman or woman lol

[@el_wumberino]

Yup. And what about considering French maps? I wonder if the French happen have any maps of Azincourt.

[@BASE5NYC]

“It’s about bravery and glory”…or it’s a bunch of guys forced to fight & die by bleeding out in a field so some fat rich king can own more land and build more castles. War is only glorious to people talking about it from the sidelines.

[@MarkHarrisonBNE]

That’s it in a nutshell! There was another video on History Hit about folks choosing their favourite Plantagenet king. I’m like, nice parlour game but only (very) slightly better than choosing your favourite member of the Corleone family!

[@butzee]

What a waste of an hour? totally misrepresented of the title?

[@kc6671]

Ugh…. Nothing… find it, it exists. Find it.

[@user-fd7yo2md6k]

Ya he likes to talk, they like to talk and unable to break info.

[@0371998]

Mon cynisme défendant une posture amis du peuple intelligent a toujours défier les propagandes de la bienpensances, et cette bataille d'Azincourt, je la comprend donc comme un tactique au service des deux couronnes qui tentent d'anéantir les seigneurs et chevaliers se trouvant en concurrence contre leurs métropoles, soit Paris et Londres. Louis XIV a pu construire Versailles pour mettre les seigneurs féodaux, l'aristocratie en position d’obéissance et sinon d'écoute forcé avec une étiquette morale et protocolaire forcément suivis, non seulement, en l'an 1415, le Roi de France et Paris ne pouvait en faire autant. Pour nous la bataille d'Azincourt c'est davantage une bataille pour soutenir un régime plus que pour gagné la guerre de 100 ans, qui déjà est en elle-même une imbécilité innommable. Si les Rois de l'an 1415 avait été honnêtes et Civilisés comme leurs ancêtres servant l'entretient Marsiens, ils auraient construit des Cirques Romains en but de pratiquer leurs Hommes avec de la gladiature et les combats quelconques. Le Moyen-Âges c'est une époque de cons, et d'Aristocrates sans Histoire ...tel que l'on dirait pour des peuples facile à coloniser.

[@MegaAlecson]

How many times is this group of channels going to reupload the same documentaries??? Not to mention you can watch all of these medieval dead ad free on other channels lol

[@hughsmith7668]

Not one transvestites bones found.

[@fiddleback1568]

No evidence it actually happened.

[@harbourdogNL]

God, the bloody overly-dramatic music just makes these shows unwatchable.

[@Torchriver67]

Well, others … don’t have the attention span you have ,obviously!

[@0371998]

L’Orator ad Brutum !!At the Time of Julius Caesar, Cicero was not opportun with his Republican rebellion, but He was frankly a godspeed spell to impose by logic to at all kings of Europe living through the Idiotic Middle-Age.

[@biffmacatawa]

Clickbait. Very little new information of any kind.

[@scottsimmons7897]

A whole bunch of nothing to see here unless you like lofty music and extraneous narrative. A pipe from an exploratory oil operation was unearthed. That's it

[@johnford6967]

You, like a lot of people are forgetting like a lot peopl that .. This is not history but real events though long ago was a terrible battle

[@TheVeek192]

Um, isn't history "real events?"

[@Koolarrow1987]

I have a request. Find a few local citizens to help create a real life toys series. A modern life of normal people with dress attire. If the local store is a military member if the ranking officers grant this a addition to there dress code. Look for a male and female of age 6,14,32 to have as a spoke person that will be a logo image of Barbe. Have as a contract that full funding of life will come from the earnings of the image of there valuer. And they can chose what they want with the earnings but must be able to compete in the Olympics. Even if they don't earn a metal of any compation. Just the compation in the Olympics will be

[@quasar8898]

Typical english. No one knows how many soldiers there were on either side, who those soldiers were, how the troops were equipped or even where the battle took place. Guess we are lucky they know the date it happened.

[@charlesfaure1189]

Forty-six minutes with no results. Con artists.

[@ghimmy47]

Move along folks. NOTHING to see here. Clickbait title and nothing to see. It's hilarious to turn on the subtitles! It seems these English aren't very understandable to an English text reader. "Adrian Court" ... lol Also funny how ALL archeologists get SO excited at the mention of GOLD!!! no matter how small. History yes, but the sheer greed does them no favor.

[@lutomson3496]

the most famous? never heard of it

[@pitmezzari2873]

Not that well read on history, are we?

[@stayhungry1503]

its like the most famous battle of the medieval period lol. certainly of the 100 years war anyway

[@GunRights4US]

What a stark admission of your glorious ignorance! 😂

[@bethparker1500]

Weird and deeply disappointing

[@neclark08]

...Huh..?

[@tire26]

This video is mostly a completely fruitless archeological hunt, maybe pass on this particular documentary. Though it was well done.

[@markperrault5678]

No women fought there tell her shut her trap

[@hannytierlierblaauw192]

Why

[@Ubique2927]

Total nonsense from that woman. We have always had the size of the English forces being between 6000-8000. The French army was between 15000-20000. About 10000 being paid soldiers and 10000 being conscripted peasants. The modern re writing of history is based on make believe facts.

[@dontrotter1099]

got to say a totally worthless show. like bigfoot. a long discourse without any ending. why havent ground penetrating radar devices been used in that area? love the story. really hoped there would be some meat to this. sadly disappointed

[@justinmorgan2126]

There is virtually no academic point to this investigation from am archaeological or historical POV, it's simply a case of getting your name in a book that no one is going to read. This is what happens when archaeologists develop serious OCD, the equivalent of a physicist becoming a dog groomer..

[@peregrinemccauley5010]

Fawning, grovelling, apologetic, politically correct shite. French weren't famished and wracked with disease. They feasted and taunted, before battle.

[@Waxer72ndVFW]

This was a very pointless video

[@jeffh8693]

3rd ad in 12 min...dislike 👎..and click DO not recommend channel

[@jefferythomas4414]

Have the French ever won anything?

[@ricohsil6261]

dude, go back to school😀