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Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Places: Agincourt Battlefield

On October 25, 1415, two armies met for one of the most climactic battles in history.  At stake was the domination of most of the territory that makes up modern France.  Henry V of England defeated a French army lead by Charles d'Albret in a fight that is the subject of at least one Shakespeare play, a movie based on that play, a few novels, and untold amounts of ink spilled by professional and amateur military historians. 

Azincourt is a French commune or township in the Pas de Calais region of France, in what would have been Plantagenet territory in Medieval times.  At one point, a castle locally called Azincourt stood surrounded by fields.  In October, heavy rains had turned those fields to mud, and the French army, with a large contingent of mounted knights and men-at-arms, was bogged down and at Henry's mercy.  After the battle, Henry V was given the opportunity to choose the name for the fight and he selected the name of the castle, Azincourt, which was corrupted to Agincourt and has stayed that way ever since.  The castle eventually crumbled into a ruin and the sparse village in the area took its name from the battle, using the French, Azincourt.  The remains of the castle foundation are still visible.

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