Following two recent historical studies of English King Henry V’s improbable military victory on a muddy French farm in 1415, it is not surprising an historical novel would appear to tell the story in a more visual, personable manner.
With Agincourt, prodigious novelist Bernard Cornwell presents a wonderful fictional version of the English army invasion of France and the subsequent showdown battle. Cornwell, already widely known for his medieval historical novels and his Richard Sharpe series, which follows an English soldier through the Napoleonic wars, picked names off the 1415 rosters of soldiers and invented backgrounds, personalities and interrelationships.
Cornwell blends his characters into the fragrant and coarse Middle Ages civilization and rounds out his story with appropriate timeless themes.
English archer Nicholas Hook is Cornwell’s lowborn protagonist in a story balanced with English and French characters.
Hook’s strength and archer training leads him first to Soissons, France, where the French re-conquer the English-occupied town. The atrocities Hook witnesses motivate him as he is recruited into the English army summoned by Henry, who seeks to strengthen his claim to France’s throne.
A generation before Joan of Arc, Hook, too, hears “voices” that guide him through his adventures and the heat of battle. He believes his guardian angels are the martyred saints Crispin and Crispinian.
The climactic Agincourt battle, as noted by William Shakespeare’s play, occurred on the feast day of those saints, Oct. 25, 1415.
Cornwell’s narrative vividly tracks the historical plot as Henry’s army sails to the mouth of the Seine River and begins a prolonged siege on the walled city of Harfleur.
The siege takes longer than expected, and Henry’s army is widely infected and weakened with dysentery before it can march inland for the return trip home via Calais, France.
The French confront Henry’s small, starving 6,000-member force with about 30,000 men. Cornwell’s extended battle narrative articulates the historical explanations of how Henry’s outnumbered army resoundingly defeated the French — the muddy battlefield and the tactical use of the English archers vs the leaderless French forces overweighed by their own armor and weapons.
Cornwell’s narrative is grisly at times, and the author displays a flair for inventing colorful and obscene medieval insults.
Cornwell populates the novel with good and evil characters from both sides. Even Henry is not black and white. A humane and grateful leader, Henry also judges harshly, ordering the execution of a soldier wrongly accused of stealing a religious artifact.
The unfortunate soldier happens to be Hook’s brother, in Cornwell’s story.
The ranks of the Christian priests vary from the purely evil — one English priest loves to rape — to the comforting and empathetic.
The extraordinary Agincourt battle continues to fascinate because it stands more for what happened than why it happened. The English continue to draw national identity from it. The Laurence Olivier movie during World War II, based on Shakespeare’s play, was government-financed for propaganda purposes.
For a three-dimensional view of the event, readers should devote time to consume three works: Cornwell’s novel, Juliet Barker’s 2005 history, also titled Agincourt and, of course, Shakespeare’s history play, King Henry V.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not