Henry V of England
Henry V won at Agincourt and was recognised as heir to France, and died before he could inherit it. Born at Monmouth in 1386, he was sixteen when an arrow struck him in the face at Shrewsbury in 1403; the surgeon John Bradmore extracted the head with a screw device of his own design, and Henry survived with a permanent scar. He effectively governed during his father's illness and quarrelled with him, and succeeded in 1413. He revived the English claim to the French throne at a moment when France was paralysed by Charles VI's insanity and the Armagnac-Burgundian civil war. He landed in 1415, took Harfleur after a five-week siege that cost him a third of his army to dysentery, and marched for Calais. He was intercepted at Agincourt on 25 October by a far larger French force, and fought in a narrow ploughed field between woods after heavy rain. The French men-at-arms advanced on foot into mud, compressed together, under longbow fire, and were destroyed; he ordered prisoners killed when he feared a renewed attack. He then did the harder thing. He returned in 1417 and conquered Normandy systematically by siege over three years, and secured the Burgundian alliance when John the Fearless was murdered in 1419. The Treaty of Troyes in 1420 disinherited the Dauphin, married Henry to Catherine of Valois, and made him heir and regent of France. He died of dysentery at Vincennes in August 1422, aged thirty-five, weeks before Charles VI. His nine-month-old son inherited both claims and lost both.
- Lived: 1386 CE – 1422 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: monarch, military_leader, head_of_state
