Agincourt: A Novel
by Bernard Cornwell
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Book Summary Information
Author: Bernard CornwellEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-01-20
ISBN: 0061578916
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Harper
Book Reviews of Agincourt: A Novel
Book Review: "Goose-Fledged Death"
Summary: 5 Stars
"Agincourt" is another lively but brutal lesson in English history, a primer in Medieval warfare and the campaigns and events that shaped what would eventually become the sprawling British Empire. As always, Cornwell spices his depiction of actual events with fictional characters - this time it's the 15th Century and the warrior king Henry V, told through the eyes of Nicholas Hook, an outlaw and archer in the King's army. The Hundred Year's War is coming to an end, chronicled here in the pious Henry's forays into France that would finally - if briefly - unite the two countries under English rule. Suffice to say, if we were taught history the way Bernard Cornwell writes it, we'd all be historians.
While Cornwell is admittedly not a scholar, he borrows heavily from scholarly works documenting the period, transforming academic text into swashbuckling human drama of love, greed, corruption, revenge and battlefield horror of unfathomable butchery - "...men of burning metal, phantoms from the dreams of hell, death coming through the dark to Soissons." But mostly "Agincourt" is homage to the humble English long bowman, a tribute to the yew bow and ash shaft and the men who trained a lifetime to develop the strength to send a bodkin-tipped arrow through an enemy's plate armor. Like the Battle of Crecy earlier in the Hundred Year's War (well told in Cornwell's highly recommended "The Archer" - the first and best of the "Grail" series), the English archer proved decisive in delivering battlefield victories over much larger and better equipped French legions. Beyond the tactics and strategies and decisions good and bad, Cornwell is at his best when describing the lives and deaths and fears and bloodlust of the men where the lines of battle become "a mess of torn metal and leather and muscle and guts." Through the mayhem, the author gently educates in topics as varied as 15th century Catholicism and the Lollards to the significance of heraldry and chivalry, while finding time to weave in the inevitable love story between the well-drawn Nicholas Hook and the fair Melisande, a French maiden and part time nun he rescues from slaughter during the horrific French army's rape their own town of Soissons.
In short, high drama and raucous history, an absolute must for the Cornwell fan and not a bad place to start for those who are not opposed to some well placed entertainment and carnage with their history.
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