Could a Peasant Defeat a Knight in Battle?

For those interested in medieval military, Invicta, the excellent history Youtube channel, has a recent documentary "How to Raise a Medieval Army":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2cm-rsDfjw

Serfdom was on its last legs in England by this stage. I believe there were plenty of landowners who practiced the longbow but a majority would have been yeomen who were tenants of big solid farms, not themselves landowners. England was almost the first place to get rid of serfdom and a peasantry both, though the Netherlands may have it beat. Remember we’re on the verge of the Reformation. These are quite urbanized bourgeois societies by the 1400s.

It also seems to have been primarily used to kill people who weren’t fighting back due to serious but not instantly fatal injury.

> The average person historically was remarkably short, generally because of childhood malnourishment.

I believe the average member of the House of Commons was visibly shorter than the members of the House of Lords at least through WWII. Certainly Americans were obviously taller than Europeans until after WWII. Even American slaves were taller and children were generally malnourished until about seven when they became capable of working. Adult height seems to have been unaffected reflecting just how rich the US was comparatively. Complete unfeeling bastards didn’t malnourish children enough to do permanent damage.

Ehhh yes, but this gets complicated and interesting in the details. Have you read Keegan on Agincourt? Short story, the popular version of French knights getting bogged down in the mud and shot to pieces with arrows is mostly false, but the English peasants did play a critical role.

Far from being mowed down by longbowmen (although they absolutely would have taken a toll, especially on horses), the French cavalry was turned back by the stakes the archers planted in their positions. The stakes were likely mingled with the archers in a kind of thicket, rather than the fence you see in movies or video games, preventing the french knights from seeing the danger until the archers fell back and it was too late.

The French second wave, armored foot, was essentially invulnerable to arrows. But the French piled into dense columns to attack the English men-at-arms (they had no interest in fighting peasant archers, there’s no glory or loot in it). So the front of the column is in big trouble and is being pushed into the English spears by the men behind them, and those in the rear have no idea what’s happening up front so they keep pushing forward. This is how people die at rock concerts or on black friday.

Mostly out of ammo at this point, the English archers come out to gang up on stragglers at the edges of the columns. This is the “flank attack” that eye witnesses report. The peasants certainly didn’t charge the flanks of the columns en masse, they would have been slaughtered. But they could definitely pick off those who tried to escape the press out the sides. Without an escape route, the French columns turn into a panicked rout. This is where most of the French losses happen, either stampeded by their own or cut down or captured by the pursuing English knights.

The English don’t chase them far, however, because there’s still a second line of French men-at-arms which hasn’t been committed to the battle, and the English have a large number of captives to keep an eye on. In the event, the French don’t renew the attack, and send out their heralds to parley.

So yes, the English won a major victory and the peasants played a big role, but the popular version misses the actual mechanics of the battle. “Conquest of France” is also rather strong. Immediately after the battle Henry turned around and went home to London. His later advantage is more down to the long term consequences of the sheer amount of the French aristocracy killed in the battle rather than any immediate gains.