30 KT2 - Henry V and the conquest of France, 1413-21

Enquiry Frame and Chronology

The official Edexcel topic asks you to explain four connected issues:

• The significance of renewing war with France and the campaign of 1415.
• The significance of the Lollard challenge and Henry's royal response.
• The importance of the Burgundian alliance in 1419.
• The significance of the conquest of Normandy and the Treaty of Troyes, 1417-20, including the basis, impact and cost of success.

The best argument is not simply that Henry V was a brilliant soldier. His achievement was to turn war into a political system. He used the French war to strengthen a still-new Lancastrian dynasty, but he could do that only after neutralising domestic threats. He won prestige at Agincourt, but he secured lasting leverage through siege warfare and control of towns. He gained the Treaty of Troyes, but only because France was divided by civil war and Burgundy chose alliance with England after 1419.

Keep the chronology tight:

This topic is a depth enquiry. That means precise sequence matters. Do not write as if Agincourt automatically caused Troyes. Agincourt gave Henry reputation and confidence; Normandy gave him territory; Burgundy gave him French political legitimacy; Troyes gave him a legal settlement. The cost was that each success committed England more deeply to holding France.

Lollardy and Royal Authority

By Henry V's reign, Lollardy was not a mass national rebellion, but it mattered because it challenged the religious unity on which medieval kingship depended. A king was expected to defend the Church. If heresy became linked with armed action, it could be treated as treason as well as false belief.

Sir John Oldcastle made the issue dangerous for Henry. Oldcastle was not an obscure agitator. He had served in war, had links with the royal circle, and became Lord Cobham by marriage. In 1413 he was accused of supporting Lollard teaching and maintaining Lollard preachers. Henry initially gave him a chance to submit, which suggests that personal status still mattered. Oldcastle refused to recant, was convicted of heresy, received a temporary stay of execution, and escaped from the Tower.

The crisis came in January 1414. Lollards gathered at St Giles's Fields near London. The exact scale and ambition of the rising are hard to reconstruct because the surviving evidence is mostly hostile to the rebels. It was reported as a plan to seize the king and force religious change. Henry, warned in advance, moved quickly. The gathering was dispersed, some rebels were captured, and repression followed. Oldcastle escaped again and remained at large until 1417, when he was captured and executed.

The significance of the Lollard challenge has three layers:

The royal response was therefore more than punishment. It helped clear the domestic ground before war with France. Henry could not risk leaving England for a continental campaign while a noble-led religious movement claimed to challenge the Church and possibly the king. His response also helped secure clerical and conservative support for his monarchy.

There are limits to this argument. Lollardy did not have the military capacity to overthrow Henry. Its political influence after 1414 was driven underground rather than destroyed as a set of beliefs. The stronger judgement is that the rising was not a near-revolution, but it was significant because Henry used its defeat to strengthen the image and machinery of royal authority. It turned the king into the defender of order just before he asked the political nation to support war abroad.

Renewing the War and the 1415 Campaign

Renewing war with France was significant because it offered Henry a solution to several problems at once. The Lancastrian dynasty still carried the memory of 1399, when Henry IV had taken the throne from Richard II. War could unite nobles behind a prestigious cause, redirect aristocratic violence abroad, secure parliamentary taxation, and present Henry as the rightful heir to Edward III's French claims. It also exploited France's weakness. Charles VI suffered bouts of mental illness, and French politics were split between Armagnac and Burgundian factions.

Henry's diplomacy before the invasion mixed legal claim and political pressure. He demanded lands and rights in France, including territories associated with earlier English claims and former Angevin possessions. Whether these demands were sincerely expected or partly designed to justify war, they framed the campaign as recovery of right rather than naked aggression. That mattered in a political culture where kingship was supposed to defend law and inheritance.

The 1415 campaign was carefully prepared. Henry used the indenture system, contracting captains to provide specified numbers of men-at-arms and archers. He also organised a huge transport operation across the Channel. This was not a casual raid. It was a siege campaign, carrying men, horses, weapons, artillery and supplies. The scale of preparation helps explain why Parliament and loans were so important: medieval conquest required administration before glory.

Henry landed in Normandy in August 1415 and besieged Harfleur. Harfleur mattered because it could become an English base near the Seine and a point of pressure on northern France. The town surrendered on 22 September, but the victory was costly. The siege took longer than Henry hoped, and disease, especially dysentery, reduced his army. Henry then chose to march towards Calais, the established English foothold in northern France. The march was dangerous because French forces blocked routes across the Somme and forced the English inland.

At Agincourt on 25 October 1415, Henry fought in poor condition against a larger French army. The English position used narrow ground between woods, with men-at-arms in the centre and archers on the flanks. Mud, crowding, French tactical disorder and English archery all reduced the French advantage in numbers. Henry's victory destroyed or captured many leading French nobles and gave him an enormous propaganda triumph.

The significance of 1415 should be balanced:

• It gave Henry personal glory and suggested divine favour for Lancastrian kingship.
• It increased support for further war, including political and financial support at home.
• It raised Henry's diplomatic standing in Europe.
• It weakened French confidence and made later English demands more credible.
• It did not, by itself, conquer France. Harfleur was the only major territorial gain from the campaign, and it required a garrison and naval protection.

Source utility matters here. A royal letter announcing Harfleur's surrender is valuable for Henry's official message: it shows the king stressing God's favour, the obedience of the town, and the justice of his claim. But it is less useful for measuring English suffering, disease or doubts, because the king was writing to encourage support at home. The same caution applies to the Gesta Henrici Quinti, a near-contemporary account close to Henry's campaign. It is useful for chronology and royal ideology, but its praise of Henry means it needs checking against administrative records and French accounts.