Records of life

Very careful records are kept on how long everyone lives. In the article on life expectancy, you can find out how many years you can expect to live, and also everyone else whose age you know. Agincourt is a tiny village in the north of France. Only 114 people live there. But the name is well remembered in history because of a great battle that was fought there more than five hun­dred years ago, in the year 1415. This battle took place in a war between Eng­land and France, which was part of a long series of wars, the Hundred Years' War. Before the Battle of Agincourt, the best fighters had been knights wearing heavy armor, mounted on horses that also were protected by armor, and fight­ing with swords and lances and battle- axes.

When the Battle of Agincourt was fought, the French army still depended on knights. But the English army, under King Henry V, had developed a new weapon. It was the longbow, of the type that Robin Hood used, and it had been made so strong, and the archers in the English army had been trained so well, that they could shoot an arrow hard enough to pierce the steel armor of the knights. The longbowmen did not need to wear armor, because they could shoot the knights down before the knights could get close enough to attack them with their swords and lances. This was a double advantage, because a man can get around much faster when he is not weighted down with heavy armor. The English longbowmen won the fight so easily, and killed so many of their French enemy, that no country ever again tried to win a war with armored knights. The Battle of Agincourt, for that reason, was called the "death of knighthood." Shakespeare wrote about it in his play Henry V.