It is 600 years this weekend since the victory of Henry V’s archers over the French. The significance of the date, a feastday of brother martyrs, was well understood by Shakespeare On the field of Agincourt on 25 October 1415, the course of English history changed. Thousands upon thousands of arrows rained down upon the French in a battle they were never expected to lose. Sickness had ravaged the English soldiery so that a paltry 9,000 (at the very most) found themselves facing a French army of at least 30,000, as Henry V of England sought to become King of France.The apparent hopelessness of the English cause is evident in Shakespeare’s Henry V, when a despairing duke says: “O that we now had here / But one ten thousand of those men in England / That do no work to-day!