Editing Battle of Agincourt (section)

===Main French assault===
[[File:King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415.png|thumb|left|upright=1.2|King Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415, by Sir John Gilbert in the 19th century.]]
Despite advancing through what the French monk of Saint Denis described as "a terrifying hail of arrow shot", the plate armour of the French men-at-arms allowed them to close the distance to the English lines after the English longbowmen started shooting from extreme longbow range (approximately {{convert|300|yd}}).{{sfn|Mortimer|2009|pp=436-439}} A complete coat of plate was considered such good protection that shields were generally not used,{{sfn|Nicholson|2004|p=109}} although the Burgundian contemporary sources distinguish between Frenchmen who used shields and those who did not, and Rogers has suggested that the front elements of the French force used axes and shields.{{sfn|Rogers|2008|p=90}} Modern historians are divided on how effective the longbows would have been against plate armour of the time. Modern test and contemporary accounts conclude that arrows could not penetrate the better quality steel armour, which became available to knights and men-at-arms of fairly modest means by the middle of the 14th&nbsp;century, but could penetrate the poorer quality [[wrought iron]] armour.<ref>Nicolle, D. (2004). Poitiers 1356: The capture of a king (Vol. 138). Osprey Publishing.</ref><ref>Loades, M. (2013). The longbow. Bloomsbury Publishing.</ref><ref>Jones, P. N. (1992). The metallography and relative effectiveness of arrowheads and armor during the Middle Ages. Materials characterization, 29(2), 111–117.</ref><ref>Military History Monthly February 2016</ref> Rogers suggested that the longbow could penetrate a wrought iron breastplate at short range and penetrate the thinner armour on the limbs even at {{convert|220|yd}}. He considered a knight in the best-quality steel armour invulnerable to an arrow on the breastplate or top of the helmet, but vulnerable to shots hitting the limbs, particularly at close range.{{sfn|Rogers|2008|pp=110–113}} In any case, to protect themselves as much as possible from the arrows, the French had to lower their visors and bend their helmeted heads to avoid being shot in the face, as the eye- and air-holes in their helmets were among the weakest points in the armour. This head-lowered position restricted their breathing and their vision. Then they had to walk a few hundred yards (metres) through thick mud and a press of comrades while wearing armour weighing {{convert|50|–|60|lb}}, gathering sticky [[clay]] all the way. Increasingly, they had to walk around or over fallen comrades.{{sfn|Barker|2015|p=301}}

[[File:Vigiles du roi Charles VII 57.jpg|thumb|right|Miniature from Vigiles du roi Charles VII. The battle of Azincourt 1415.]]
The surviving French men-at-arms reached the front of the English line and pushed it back, with the longbowmen on the flanks continuing to shoot at point-blank range. When the archers ran out of arrows, they dropped their bows and, using [[hatchet]]s, [[sword]]s, and the [[mallet]]s they had used to drive their stakes in, attacked the now disordered, fatigued and wounded French men-at-arms massed in front of them. The French could not cope with the thousands of lightly armoured longbowmen assailants, who were much less hindered by the mud and weight of their armour, combined with the English men-at-arms. The impact of thousands of arrows, combined with the slog in heavy armour through the mud, the heat and difficulty breathing in plate armour with the visor down,<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Askew |first=Graham N. |last2=Formenti |first2=Federico |last3=Minetti |first3=Alberto E. |year=2012 |title=Limitations imposed by wearing armour on Medieval soldiers' locomotor performance |journal=Proc. R. Soc. B |volume=279 |issue=1729 |pages=640–644 |doi=10.1098/rspb.2011.0816 |pmc=3248716 |pmid=21775328}}</ref> and the crush of their numbers, meant the French men-at-arms could "scarcely lift their weapons" when they finally engaged the English line.{{sfn|Curry|2000|p=159}} The exhausted French men-at-arms were unable to get up after being knocked to the ground by the English. As the melee developed, the French second line also joined the attack, but they too were swallowed up, with the narrow terrain meaning the extra numbers could not be used effectively. Rogers suggested that the French at the back of their deep formation would have been attempting to literally add their weight to the advance, without realising that they were hindering the ability of those at the front to manoeuvre and fight by pushing them into the English formation of lancepoints. After the initial wave, the French would have had to fight over and on the bodies of those who had fallen before them. In such a "[[crowd crush|press]]" of thousands of men, Rogers suggested that many could have suffocated in their armour, as was described by several sources, and which was also known to have happened in other battles.{{sfn|Rogers|2008|pp=95–98}}

The French men-at-arms were taken prisoner or killed in the thousands. The fighting lasted about three hours, but eventually the leaders of the second line were killed or captured, as those of the first line had been. The English ''Gesta Henrici'' described three great heaps of the slain around the three main English standards.{{sfn|Curry|2000|p=37}}
According to contemporary English accounts, Henry fought hand to hand. Upon hearing that his youngest brother [[Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester]] had been wounded in the groin, Henry took his household guard and stood over his brother, in the front rank of the fighting, until Humphrey could be dragged to safety. The king received an axe blow to the head, which knocked off a piece of the crown that formed part of his helmet.{{sfn|Mortimer|2009|p=443}}