Agincourt

Agincourt:

This article is almost useless except that it points you in the direction of the controversy. If it causes you to be curious, you now know to go find something better on the subject.

One side of the controversy is 'traditional' historians, represented by a single figure who bases his numbers 'on chronicles he considers to be broadly accurate.' A reporter should tell the reader which chronicles he means, and why he thinks they are accurate, since the whole point of the article is that other historians are suggesting revised numbers. It wouldn't take more than a couple of sentences to sketch the position. The revisionist side gets that kind of a sketch -- the reporter cites the types of evidence they are considering, along with a few of their reasons. The piece is as one-sided as the Times' political analysis. Is the Times so anti-tradition that it just assumes that the traditionalists are always wrong, in history as in politics, in academics as in culture?

The Times reporter does find it interesting that "a new science of military history" is making revisions to current Army doctrine. I don't know what he means by 'a new science of military history,' since military history is neither new (anyone heard of Thucydides?) nor a science. History is one of the liberal arts; nor should anyone who cares about history wish to clump it in with such "disciplines" as sociology or the other so-called "social sciences." Better to be an honest art than a fake science!

I'm glad to say that the Army got better advice from its experts than the Times manages to produce here:

The Hundred Years’ War never made it into the [US Army COIN] field manual — the name itself may have served as a deterrent — but after sounding numerous cautions on the vast differences in time, technology and political aims, historians working in the area say that there are some uncanny parallels with contemporary foreign conflicts.

For one thing, by the time Henry landed near the mouth of the Seine on Aug. 14, 1415, and began a rather uninspiring siege of a town called Harfleur, France was on the verge of a civil war, with factions called the Burgundians and the Armagnacs at loggerheads. Henry would eventually forge an alliance with the Burgundians, who in today’s terms would become his “local security forces” in Normandy, and he cultivated the support of local merchants and clerics, all practices that would have been heartily endorsed by the counterinsurgency manual.

The Hundred Years War wasn't a counterinsurgency; it was the clash of two early states. A key fact of the war, unlike modern conflicts, was the power of fortification. Whereas today it is nearly impossible for an enemy army to fortify itself so as to be impossible to attack, the technology of the period made it quite possible to build an impregnable castle. Even cities could be fortified to such a degree that they could stand off an army for weeks or months.

Thus, one of the reason we so often find exhausted English armies having to fight superior French numbers is that the English were required to deal with these fortifications. One tactic was the long siege, during which your forces in the field grew weaker while the enemy elswhere could prepare an army to bring against you. Another tactic was the chevauchee, a brutal march through the countryside, burning and laying waste to such a degree that the French could no longer afford to remain behind their walls. The chevauchee in particular looks nothing like modern COIN methods; intentionally laying waste to the countryside in order to bring the enemy to battle is the perfect opposite of what the US Army manual advises.

Leaving that aside, though, it is true that the two campaigns both featured allies and attempts to persuade those with money or power to support your side. They both also featured violence and death, so I suppose that really, the two conflicts were exactly the same.

Other than that, though, the article is fine.

UPDATE: Actually, re-reading the article, it's still not fine. Re: "...after sounding numerous cautions on the vast differences in time, technology and political aims, historians working in the area say that there are some uncanny parallels..."

Apparently the author decided he wasn't interested in what the historians actually wanted to say, which was the part about numerous cautions on vast differences in time, technology, and political aims. Rather, he wanted to impose a story that there were "uncanny parallels" with today in order to make the piece interesting for average readers and not just history buffs. He elides past everything useful they actually said -- probably including some of the very issues raised above -- in order to get to the slight parallel that they finally admitted to after the "numerous cautions."

Ugh.